ABSTRACT
Purpose@#This study was attempted to identify the importance and performance of person-centered care in nurses in intensive care units (ICU) at general hospitals and to derive the priority of practical person-centered care needs and intervention by analysing their needs. @*Methods@#A total of 156 ICU nurses who wrote a written consent participated in a survey questionnaire on person-centered critical care nursing (PCCN). The collected data were analyzed using paired t-test, Borich’s needs assessment, and the Locus for Focus Model. @*Results@#All 15 items of person-centered care in ICU nurses were found to be significantly higher in perception of importance than performance level (t=17.98, p<.001). According to the analysis of Borich's needs and the Locus of Focus Model, person-centered care items with highest priority in ICU were therapeutic contact, comfort words and actions, and efforts to empathize with patients in the compassion category. @*Conclusion@#As a strategy to improve the person-centered nursing performance of ICU nurses in the ‘individuality’, it is necessary for ICU nurses to recognize the ICU patients as an individualized person, not as a disease or machine-dependent entity. Also, it is necessary to develop programs to improve the ICU nurses' compassion competence because ‘compassion’ was a top priority according to Borich's needs assessment model and the Locus for Focus Model.