In recent years, nurses have developed projects in the area of hospital to community transition. The objective of the present study was to analyze the transitional care offered to elderly people after they used emergency services and were discharged to return to the community. The action research method was chosen. The participants were nurses, elderly people 70 years old or older, and their caregivers. The study was carried out from October 2018 to August 2019. The data were collected by means of semi-structured interviews with the nurses, analysis of medical records, participatory observation, phone calls to the elderly people and caregivers, and team meetings. The qualitative data were submitted to Bardin’s content analysis. Statistical treatment was carried out by applying SPSS version 23.0. The institution’s research ethics committee approved the research. Only 31.4% of the sample experienced care continuity after discharge, and the rate of readmission to emergency services during the first 30 days after discharge was 33.4%. The referral letters lacked data on information provided to patients or caregivers, and nurses mentioned difficulties in communication between care levels, as well as obstacles to teamwork; they also mentioned that the lack of health policies and clinical rules to formalize transitional care between the hospital and the community perpetuated non-coordination of care between the two contexts. The low level of literacy of patients and their relatives are mentioned as a cause for not understanding the information regarding seeking primary health care services and handing the discharge letter. It was concluded that there is an urgent need to mobilize health teams toward action in the patients’ process of returning home, and this factor must be taken into account in care planning.
Background: Quality assessment in oncology nursing care has been a growing topic in the literature, gaining relevance as oncological nursing care becomes more complex as the science progresses. However, there are no instruments that assess the perception of the quality of oncology nursing care from the point of view of patients for the Portuguese population. Thus, the cross-cultural translation and validation of the Quality of Oncology Nursing Care Scale (QONCS) was performed for the Portuguese context. This instrument allows nurses to assess patients’ self-perception of the quality of nursing care provided in an oncological setting. It also allows researchers to compare the results obtained internationally with the application of this scale. Methods: This is a methodological study, with two distinct phases: the first corresponded to the translation and cultural adaptation of the scale to the Portuguese context, and the second consisted of the psychometric validation of the QONCS, which included factor analysis and the evaluation of the psychometric properties of the instrument. We obtained responses from 402 patients from a Portuguese oncology hospital. Results: The Portuguese version of the Quality of Oncology Nursing Care Scale (QONCS_PT) consists of 34 items inserted into a tetra-factorial model, which explains a total variance of the instrument of 69.8%. A Cronbach’s alpha of 0.93 was obtained for the complete instrument. Conclusions: QONCS_PT has a competent and reliable structure. The scale’s validity was assured and can be used in the Portuguese population, as it is useful for direct care provision but also for researchers and managers.