Private patients' perceptions of nursing practice in the National Health Service.

: A study of private patients (n = 649) was carried out in Wessex Region in January 1991 to discover why patients decide to go private rather than use the NHS for in-patient treatment. Relatively few patients complained of the attitudes of nurses in the NHS, but just over one third mentioned nursing as a significant problem in the NHS and, of this group, over half were critical of nurses' attitudes. Further analysis revealed that these perceptions were not based on direct experience (of those who said that nursing was a problem, only 5 per cent had been NHS in-patients since 1985), but alarm about the public image of nursing remains.