The need for evidence-based guidelines in home care.
There is a lack of condition-specific evidence-based guidelines in the home care field. A recent article by Peterson (2004) suggests that the home care industry must now address this on several fronts, including: 1. adopting guidelines for specific conditions from other settings, 2. implementing selected "best practices" developed by within home care agencies (that are usually consensus-based), and 3. collecting outcomes data with the purpose of creating a home care specific evidence base.This column summarizes Peterson's (2004) recent work on the importance of creating an evidence base for the home care field.
Ahrens
Joann
J
Center for Home Care Policy & Research, Visiting Nurse Service of New York, 5 Penn Plaza, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10001, USA. jahrens@vnsny.org
D019985:Benchmarking; D003152:Community Health Nursing / Q000592:standards*; D032921:Consensus; D019317:Evidence-Based Medicine; D006301:Health Services Needs and Demand; D006699:Home Care Services / Q000592:standards*; D006801:Humans; D015403:Nursing Evaluation Research / Q000458:organization & administration; D017063:Outcome Assessment, Health Care / Q000458:organization & administration; D017410:Practice Guidelines as Topic