Objective  To examine the satisfaction to nursing worker service and its influencing factors among inpatients in public tertiary hospitals in China and to provide evidences for improving the management on informal nursing care in hospitals.

  Methods  With random sampling, we conducted questionnaire surveys among 23 767 inpatients about to be discharged at 144 public tertiary hospitals in 31 province-level regions across China during March 18 – 31, 2019 and the information collected from 6 211 inpatients receiving nursing worker service during their hospitalizations were analyzed. Using stratified random sampling, we selected 2 or 3 hospitals in the eastern, western and the central regions to recruit inpatients (n = 50) having nursing worker service in the sampled hospitals and perform face-to-face semi-structured interviews with the selected inpatients; ‘grounded theory’ based analysis was adopted in analyses on relevant information from the interviewees.

  Results  Of the 6 211 respondents, 5 968 (96.09%) reported satisfaction to the service provided by nursing workers during hospitalization. The results of ‘grounded theory’ analysis revealed that main influencing factors for inpatients′ satisfaction to nursing workers′ service included nursing workers′ general quality, service attitude, usefulness of the service, sponsor or introducer of nursing worker, management manner of nursing service, environment of nursing service market, and social recognition on nursing service. Nursing workers are human resource for nursing service-related hospitals, corporations, and markets; hospitals and corporations provide direct support and the society provides indirect support to nursing workers′ service; the three aspects mentioned above are interacted each other and have integrated influence on nursing workers′ service quality and inpatients′ satisfaction to the service provided by the nursing workers.

  Conclusion  The satisfaction to nursing worker service among inpatients in public tertiary hospitals in China needs to be improved. Nursing workers, hospitals/corporations and social environment exert an interactive impact on inpatients′ satisfaction to services provided by nursing workers.