Is nursing care satisfaction independently associated with postoperative recovery quality? A cross-sectional study with hierarchical regression analysis

The aim of this study was to examine the association between nursing care satisfaction and postoperative recovery quality among surgical patients and its relationship with demographic and surgical characteristics. A descriptive, cross-sectional, correlational study with regression analysis. This study included 131 adult patients (ASA I–III) who underwent elective surgical procedures in the general, plastic, and orthopedic surgery clinics of training and research hospital in Turkey. Nursing care satisfaction and postoperative recovery quality were evaluated 24 h after surgery using the Newcastle Satisfaction with Nursing Scale (NSNS) and the Quality of Recovery-40 (QoR-40), respectively. Non-parametric tests, Spearman’s correlation analysis, and simple and hierarchical multiple linear regression analyses, including collinearity and residual diagnostics with bootstrap verification, were used for statistical analyses ( p < 0.05). The median NSNS and QoR-40 scores were 73.68 and 155.0, respectively. Older patients (66–92 years) and those without health insurance reported lower QoR-40 scores. Patients with shorter preoperative hospital stays and those undergoing laparoscopic surgery exhibited significantly higher QoR-40 scores, and shorter preoperative hospital stay was additionally associated with higher NSNS scores ( p = 0.008); a similar trend for NSNS score by surgical approach did not reach statistical significance ( p = 0.051). A positive correlation was found between NSNS and total QoR-40 scores, particularly within the domains of physical comfort, emotional state, and psychological support. Regression analysis showed that nursing care satisfaction was significantly and positively associated with postoperative recovery quality, explaining 7.7% of the variance in QoR-40 scores, a small effect size by conventional criteria. In a hierarchical multiple regression adjusting for age, health insurance status, preoperative hospital stay, surgical department, and surgical approach, nursing care satisfaction remained independently associated with recovery quality and significantly improved model fit beyond the covariates alone, with the fully adjusted model explaining 23.2% of the variance in QoR-40 scores. Higher satisfaction with nursing care was associated with higher postoperative recovery quality scores, particularly in the domains of physical comfort, emotional well-being, and psychological support, and this association remained significant after adjustment for age, health insurance status, preoperative hospital stay, surgical department, and surgical approach.