Blood pressure measurement - an observational study of 21 public health nurses

The purpose of this study was to observe how public health nurses perform b lood pressure measurement. Structured observations were made of 21 randomly selected public health nur ses while they performed three blood pressure measurements. The public health nurses used an overall correct method for blood pressure measurement. Five nurses out of 21 used the Tri-cuff but the soft cuff was most frequent ly used. When choosing the breadth of the cuff, 10 nurses decided by eye an d not by the marks on the cuff. To ensure a completely correct method additional information is needed by n urses.