Outcomes for community health nursing practice

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.