Patient-Centered Care (PCC) has been adopted as the approach to care in various hospitals, however, extent to which PCC is actually implemented by nurses, and extent to which PCC is associated with positive patient outcomes is not clear. PCC is operationalized as provision of individualized care, patient participation in care, patient education and counseling and coordination of care. Purposes of this study were to examine the extent to which staff nurses provided PCC to patients admitted to hospital, as perceived by staff nurses and patients assigned to their care, and examine the similarities and differences between nurses' and patients' perceptions of PCC.

A descriptive correlational design with repeated measures was used. Data were collected from 63 nurses and 44 patients from a neuroscience, a cardiology and an orthopedic unit where PCC staff development initiatives had been implemented. Patient outcome data were gathered upon admission and one week after discharge.

Results indicated statistically significant p£ .05) differences between nurses and patients on provision of care, patient participation in care, education and counseling. Mean scores for patients were lower than those for nurses. Percentage of patients who experienced some improvement varied across outcomes. Significant relationships were found between aspects of PCC and changes in the outcomes of self-care, sense of personal control, and satisfaction with care. Findings of this study guide further improvement in the implementation of PCC to continuously enhance quality of nursing care, patient's hospital experience and readiness for discharge.