Understanding hospitals as sites of care that address social needs—why it matters

Nurses represent the largest of the health professions, and it is for nursing care that people enter hospitals. Understanding the variations that exist in nurses’ perceptions of the quality of care matters because they are uniquely situated to understand collectively how to transform broken care structures, given their proximity to the problem. Brooks Carthon and colleagues use qualitative data to synthesize nurses’ perceptions about facilitators and barriers to addressing the needs of socially disadvantaged patients. The investigators used data from an existing study of nurses who work in hospitals in Illinois and New York to understand their perspectives on addressing social needs in the context of clinical care. This work used a qualitative research design grounded in social-ecological theory to examine open comment sections that allowed for nurses to use their own words in providing health care and addressing social services.