Writing and using standards of nursing care.
This paper outlines some of the background to developments in setting nursing standards in the UK. Many nurses are busily engaged in this activity, and this paper offers a case study of the experience of standard setting in one unit. The Care of the Elderly Unit consists of 162 beds and a 50-place day hospital. Four wards accept acutely ill patients of both sexes, and a further five offer a mixture of rehabilitation and respite care. The buildings are a mixture of old workhouse-type wards and modern purpose-built facilities. A total of 170 nurses are employed in the unit which includes a team of clinical specialists and a senior nurse manager with overall responsibility for the nursing services. Staff at all levels on this team were involved in standard setting. The process of standard setting was an accumulation of eight years' work, with a more intense phase of activity in the last year. A variety of tools have been designed to test out the achievement of the standards.
Arnold
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Wright
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D000368:Aged; D005851:Geriatric Nursing / Q000592:standards*; D006801:Humans; D009732:Nursing Care / Q000592:standards*; D009741:Nursing Staff, Hospital / Q000193:education; D010347:Patient Care Planning; D011785:Quality Assurance, Health Care; D014956:Writing