Objective: The purpose of this study was to develop an easy, practical list
of outcomes amenable to community health nursing interventions. This study
sought to answer the following question:What outcomes are sensitive to nur
sing interventions in the community health setting?
Summary Background Data: Nursing literature discusses many client outcomes.
However, available outcome lists are not always sensitive to nursing inter
ventions by community health nurses. Nurses need a precise list to measure
client outcomes resulting from contact between nurses and clients in a vari
ety of community health settings.
Methods and Subjects: The study used a modified Delphi technique to ensure
adequate response from the subjects. Initially, focus groups generated item
s for the Delphi questionnaires. Using items from the focus groups, the res
earchers developed three rounds of questionnaires. In each round, nurses st
ated a level of agreement with each item as an outcome for community health
nurses. Twenty-two community health nurses in one Southeastern state parti
cipated in four focus groups. One hundred fifty-two community health nurses
returned round 1 questionnaires, 68 nurses returned round 2 questionnaires
, and 48 nurses returned round 3 questionnaires.
Results: The researchers grouped the outcomes into four domains: client's p
sychosocial components of care, client's physiologic components of care, nu
rsing intervention/implementation components of care, and environmental/com
munity safety components of care.
Conclusions: The findings produced an easy, practical list of 48 nursing ou
tcomes for use in decision making and research by community health nurses i
n all settings.