How well do nurses know their patients? Agreement between patients' degree-of-worry and nurses' estimation of patients' degree-of-worry-An observational study

Aim: To assess the agreement between patients' self-reported degree-of-worry (DOW) and nurses' evaluation of patients' DOW. Design: An observational cohort study with patients and their primary nurses. Methods: Between 22 February and 27 March 2021, data collection among patients and their nurses in an emergency department was carried out. Patients ≥18 years, cognitively intact and Danish or English speaking were eligible to participate. Nurses regardless of seniority and gender were eligible for participation. The single-item degree-of-worry measure, ‘how worried are you about the condition you are here today on a scale from 1 to 10, where 1 is minimally worried and 10 is maximum worried’ as well as information on gender, age, co-morbidity, triage level and medical reason for encounter was collected from patients. The corresponding nurses were asked; ‘how worried do you think your patient is about the condition he/she is there today on a scale from 1 to 10, where 1 is minimally worried and 10 is maximum worried?’ Nurses also supplied data on gender, age, seniority as a Registered Nurse and in the ED. Agreement between patients' self-reported degree-of-worry and nurses' evaluation of patients' degree-of-worry was assessed with weighted Cohen's Kappa. Results: A total of 194 patient–nurse pairs were included for analysis. The agreement between patients' DOW and nurses' evaluation of patients' DOW categorised as DOW _low, DOW _middle and DOW _high was in total agreement in n = 85 pairs (43.8%) of the ratings, which corresponds to a weighted Cohen's Kappa of 0.19 (0.08–0.30; p < 0.001). Conclusion: Nurses estimate of their patients' DOW was in very poor agreement. This indicates that nurses are not able to assess the patient's DOW to a satisfactory level. This result is troubling as it may have serious consequences for patient care as it indicates that the nurses do not know their patients' perspectives.