Abstract
OBJECTIVES: assess the quality of nursing care, the patients' satisfaction and the correlation between both. METHOD: cross-sectional study, involving 275 patients hospitalized at a teaching hospital in the Central-West of Brazil. The data were collected through the simultaneous application of three instruments. Next, they were included in an electronic database and analyzed in function of the positivity, median value and Spearman's correlation coefficients. RESULTS: among the nursing care assessed, only two were considered safe--hygiene and physical comfort; nutrition and hydration--while the remainder were classified as poor. Nevertheless, the patients were satisfied with the care received in the domains assessed: technical-professional, confidence and educational. This can be justified by the weak to moderate correlation that was observed among these variables. CONCLUSION: Despite the quality deficit, the patients' satisfaction level with the nursing care received was high. These results indicate that the institution needs to center its objectives on a continuing evaluation system of the care quality, aiming to attend to the patients' expectations.