LAUSR

BACKGROUND Caring is an essential component of professional nursing practice, which directly affects the quality of patient care. Nurses' caring ability may not meet patients' demands for high-quality care. There are challenges in designing and implementing interventions to improve nurses' caring ability, especially in China. Understanding Chinese nurses' caring ability and related influential factors serves as the basis for effective interventions to improve their ability to care for patients. AIM To describe the caring ability of nurses and its potential predictors in China. METHODS From January to February 2018, a cross-sectional survey was conducted among 2304 Registered Nurses working at different levels of hospitals across 29 provinces in China. The structured online survey included socio-demographic information, Caring Ability Inventory, Caring Efficacy Scale and Professional Quality of Life. Descriptive statistics, univariate analyses and multivariate analyses were conducted. RESULTS Overall caring ability and its three dimensions of the participants were all significantly lower than the Nkongho' norm, an international scoring standard of nurse's caring ability. Age, employment type, workplace, caring efficacy, compassion satisfaction, burnout and secondary traumatic stress were predictors of knowing, explaining 41.8% of the variance. Predictors of courage were educational level, bereavement experience, caring efficacy, compassion satisfaction and burnout (31.7% of the variance). Educational level, workplace, exposure to critically ill patients, caring efficacy, compassion satisfaction, burnout and secondary traumatic stress were influencing factors of patience, accounting for 19.5% of the variance. CONCLUSIONS Chinese nurses' caring ability, with patience, knowing, and courage in descending order. Particular attention needs to be paid to the courage dimension of the nurses' caring ability. Further, the predictors of overall caring ability and each dimension were diverse. These results indicate that nurse educators and administrators need to identify training priorities and design targeted interventions based on the influencing factors.