The continuum of care: a concept development study.
OBJECTIVE
The aim of this paper is to communicate attributes, antecedents, and consequences identified within the 'continuum of care' using the process of concept development.


BACKGROUND
The term 'continuum of care' is embedded in health care experience and is consistently taken for granted in health care literature without adequate analysis or definition.


METHODS
Using EndNote and MS Excel software, a sample of 153 articles from 638 nursing and allied health journal articles retrieved by electronic search were reviewed; keywords descriptive of the concept were manually extracted. An electronic library was created and searched for keyword frequencies and words were ranked and sorted into unifying categories.


RESULTS
Four major unifying categories of attributes: people, environment, events and time, were identified, described and encorporated into a definition of the concept. An exemplar case was identified.


CONCLUSIONS
The continuum of care was identified as a concept with specific, describable attributes evidenced in an exemplar case.
McBryde-Foster
Merry
M
Louise Herrington School of Nursing, Baylor University, Dallas, Texas 75246, USA. merry_mcbryde-foster@baylor.edu
Allen
Toni
T
D003210:Concept Formation; D003266:Continuity of Patient Care; D004777:Environment; D005380:Financing, Government; D006801:Humans; D007348:Insurance, Health; D006278:Medicare; D009740:Nursing Staff; D010348:Patient Care Team; D010361:Patients; D013995:Time