Chemotherapy produces bodily changes that alter individuals' requirements and abilities for self-care action. Disparties between patients' and nurses' perceptions of the chemotherapy experience may result in increased stress for patients during the treatment period. This descriptive study compared patient and nurse preceptions of patients' self-care deficits associated with cancer chemotherapy in an outpatient setting. self-care concepts, preptual theory of behavior, and constructivist methodology were interrelated as a framework for the study. An open-ended, semistructured interview schedule, constructed by the inveistigator, was used to elicit data from 30 patients and their assigned registered nurses. Subjects' verbatim responses were classfied according to the categories of universal self-care requisties developed by Orem. of 122 classfiable responses, 75 were from patients and 47 were from nurses. Patients generally perceived more self-care deficits than did nurses in the categories that included problems with physical side effects of therapy. Nurses perceived Slightly more deficits than patients in relation to the categories that included psychosocial problems. The finding indicated that nurses did not perceive the exent to which patients required assistance, particularly in relation to maintaining a balance between activity and rest.