title: Kitson's Therapeutic Nursing Function Indicator as a predictor of the quality of nursing care in hospital wards.
abstract: This study examines the value of Kitson's (1991) Therapeutic Nursing Function Indicator (TNFI) as a predictor of the quality of nursing care in hospital wards. The TNFI was updated and modified for use in medical and surgical as well as elderly care wards, and was administered to the sister and deputy of 11 wards. Kitson's Therapeutic Nursing Function Matrix (TNFM), which assesses the quality of self-care activities (more precisely, the level of therapeutic nursing), was administered to patients in the first nine wards and was tested for inter-rater reliability. Acceptable reliability was achieved for identification of activities. However, correlations between activity scores were low, although statistically significant. Scores from the modified TNFI were compared with mean TNFM ward scores to test Kitson's finding that the TNFI is a predictor of the quality of nursing; our results did not support this hypothesis. Differences in the design of our study with Kitson's might be responsible for this result. Our analysis, however, suggests that the TNFI has become out of date because of changes in the organisation of nursing work, and that it is no longer a sensitive predictor of the quality of nursing care.
authors.affiliation: Department of Nursing Studies, King's College London, U.K.
authors.forename: I J
authors.initials: IJ
authors.lastname: Norman
authors.forename: S J
authors.initials: SJ
authors.lastname: Redfern
authors.forename: D A
authors.initials: DA
authors.lastname: Tomalin
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Oliver
mesh_terms: D000203:Activities of Daily Living; D000368:Aged; D005851:Geriatric Nursing / Q000592:standards; D006801:Humans; D009732:Nursing Care / Q000592:standards*; D015403:Nursing Evaluation Research; D015588:Observer Variation; D011237:Predictive Value of Tests; D011787:Quality of Health Care; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012648:Self Care; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires