In this Clinical Practice Development (CPD) project we set out to identify and describe current approaches to the management and delivery of nursing care in an Australian Metropolitan Teaching Hospital. Using a simple descriptive design, data were collected to elicit patterns of care provided by nursing teams. We sought to demonstrate patterns described by nursing teams (interviews) and actual patterns of care (observation). As expected there was a degree of incongruence between the espoused and actual patterns of care. Interview data revealed that most study wards had a view of nursing that emphasizes meeting the total care needs of patients and their families through offering biopsychosocial and educative care. The observational data revealed that a relatively large proportion of time was expended on activities that were not regarded as important by staff when interviewed (e.g. documentation) while relatively small amounts of time were observed to be spent educating patients or communicating with relatives of patients. The identification of this type of gap creates a dissonance in clinicians that can be used to stimulate change through CPD. Clinicians used the information to stimulate discussion and to rewrite team value statements.

Item Type:	Refereed Article
Keywords:	Clinical Practice Development, nursing philosophy, patterns of care,
Research Division:	Medical and Health Sciences
Research Group:	Nursing
Research Field:	Nursing not elsewhere classified
Objective Division:	Health
Objective Group:	Health and Support Services
Objective Field:	Health and Support Services not elsewhere classified
Author:	Fitzgerald, MA (Professor Mary Fitzgerald)
Author:	Walsh, K (Professor Kenneth Walsh)
ID Code:	63196
Year Published:	2003
Web of Science® Times Cited:	24
Deposited By:	Nurse Education Unit
Deposited On:	2010-04-21
Last Modified:	2014-10-13
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