Metaphor perceptions of nurses regarding care and care behaviors

This research has been conducted in a cross-sectional and descriptive way for the purpose of determining the metaphor perceptions of nurses regarding care and care behaviors. The sample of the research is composed of 345 nurses who work in a university and state hospital alongside with two private hospitals and who accept taking part in the research. The data is collected by using the demographic characteristics form prepared in line with the literature by the researcher, Care Behavior Inventory-24 (CBI-24) and questions that are created to measure their metaphor perception. In the evaluation of the data, numerical and percentage tests, Mann Whitney U, Kruskall Wallis-H, Student T Test, Anova, Fisher, Chi Square tests are used. When the total CBI-24 scale and subscale scores of the nurses are analyzed, it has been determined that the total score of the scale was 5.40±0.50, the score of the security subscale was 5.43±0.57, the score of the information and skills subscale was 5.66±0.42, the score of the being respectful subscale was 5.32±0.61 and the score of the loyalty subscale was 5.21±0.66; and it got the lowest score from the loyalty subscale score and the highest score from the information and skills subscale score. A statistically significant difference was found between the score averages of care behavior scales according to the hospitals and clinics where the nurses worked, the status of the nurses at the clinics where they worked, the number of patient beds, average time spent for care, choosing the profession of nursery willingly, perceiving care among the roles of nurses, perceiving giving care as the primary duty of the nurse (p<0.05). It has been determined that the nurses developed 132 metaphors regarding the concept of care. The metaphors that the nurses created regarding the concept of "care" are evaluated in 8 categories. It has been determined that the highest number of categories in which the nurses created metaphors were child, flower, cleanliness, love, medicine, baby and soil. It is suggested to reevaluated periodically care behaviors of nurses.