The limitations of hospital ward quality monitoring and reporting and factors contributing to the limitations are identified and discussed in this paper. In general, the limitations comprise a lack of standardisation in hospital ward quality monitoring reports, absence of nursing informatics in the hospital information system, inadequate development of nurse sensitive indicators and a lack of input from frontline nurses. Moreover, the nursing practice environment (NPE) is poorly conceptualized and there are competing and conflicting viewpoints about the parameters of the NPE. These limitations have contributed to the current state of ward quality monitoring and reporting. As a result, frontline nurses in the acute ward setting cannot receive meaningful and sensitive information to support their endeavours to monitor and enhance nursing care quality. In order to address challenges of the NPE and meet specific requirements of frontline nurses to support their quality improvement activities and decision-making processes, further research should be developed to explore, describe and examine quality monitoring processes
