Time for change in community nursing? A critique of the implementation of the Review of Nursing in the Community across NHS Scotland

Challenges in municipality healthcare services-The nurse leaders' perspective

AIM

To examine perceptions of key challenges that nursing leadership face when organizing healthcare services in the municipality.

DESIGN

A qualitative study involving community nurse leaders (N = 9) in two focus group interviews.

METHODS

The material has been processed and interpreted in accordance with the phenomenological-hermeneutical tradition, and this process was inspired by Graneheim and Lundman.

RESULTS

Three themes were identified in this study: (a) Tension between organizing the daily work and future challenges; (b) Challenges with recruiting enough registered nurse (RNs) in municipal healthcare services; and (c) Competence development plan-a strategic tool for nursing leadership. The municipal healthcare services need a better knowledge base with better knowledge of both the content and quality of services, organization, leadership and management, thus improving new forms of work and professional approaches.

Public health nurses' activities at a time of specialization in nursing-A national study

OBJECTIVES

To provide a detailed, up-to-date account of the job description and practice areas of current public health nurses.

DESIGN AND SAMPLE

A cross-sectional study. A sample of 824 public health nurses, 80% of public health nurses in Israel, participated in a national structured survey.

MEASURES

A structured questionnaire eliciting self-reported public health nursing activities, priorities, perceived deficiencies, and job satisfaction was compiled.

RESULTS

Nearly 70% of surveyed public health nurses provided individual-level interventions and less population-health-focused activities such as community needs assessments and development and implementation of community-based projects.

CONCLUSIONS

Advanced training should be required in several areas of practice and the scope of public health nurses' practice should be expanded, with greater emphasis on population health.

Caseload profiling in district nursing: a systematic literature review

This systematic literature review aims to identify and appraise current evidence to establish if caseload profiling (CP) provides a strategy to support district nurses to evidence and manage increasingly complex caseloads. A total of 17 studies where thematically synthesised and recurrent themes were identified and summarised under the headings of: defining caseload profiling; caseload profiling in the context of caseload management; workload analysis and its relationship to caseload profiling; potential impact of caseload profiling; and potential barriers to caseload profiling. The literature review showed CP is a robust method of articulating the complexity of care and practitioners could use it to help manage their own caseloads. However, the literature is mainly founded on expert opinion and further research is needed to strengthen the validity of the evidence.