Healthcare quality continues to be a subject of intense criticism and
debate. Although quality nursing care is vital to patient outcomes and safety,
meaningful improvements have been disturbingly slow. Analysis of quality care
literature reveals that practising nurses are rarely involved in developing or defining
improvement programs for quality nursing care. Therefore, two major study premises
were that quality nursing care must be meaningful and relevant to nurses and
that uncovering their meaning of quality nursing care could facilitate more effective
improvement approaches