Personalizing protocol-driven care: the case of specialist heart failure nurses.
OBJECTIVE
This paper is a report of a study conducted to explore how specialist heart failure nurses negotiate treatment advice with patients, in the context of an increasing expectation that clinical staff in the National Health Services will follow guidelines in their daily work.


BACKGROUND
The development of specialist nurse roles has given rise to questions about their compatibility with patient-centred care. However, research has revealed little about how specialist nurses balance clinical guidelines with traditional caring tasks.


METHODS
Semi-structured interviews (n = 10) were conducted with specialist heart failure nurses in northern England recruited from a heart failure specialist nursing contact list. In addition, non-participant observations were carried out on nurse-patient consultations (n = 16) in one regional nurse-led heart failure clinic. Data were collected between 2003 and 2005, and analysed using a variation of grounded theory.


RESULTS
Heart failure nurses sought to combine traditional caring work with the wider goal of improving patient outcomes by 'personalizing' their advice to patients and presenting their heart failure as 'typical'. They accommodated protocol-driven care into their daily routines, and perceived no disjuncture between evidence-based practice and patient-centredness. However, their approach allowed little space for the exploration of each patient's own priorities about their illness.


CONCLUSIONS
There is a need both to re-examine the appropriateness of traditional caring concepts, and to reflect on the need to incorporate patients' own values into the consultation process.
Sanders
Tom
T
Arthritis Research UK Primary Care Centre, Primary Care Sciences, Keele University, UK. t.sanders@cphc.keele.ac.uk
Harrison
Stephen
S
Checkland
Katherine
K
D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D001291:Attitude of Health Personnel; D002985:Clinical Protocols; D019317:Evidence-Based Medicine; D005260:Female; D019983:Guideline Adherence; D006291:Health Policy; D006333:Heart Failure / Q000451:nursing*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009720:Nurse Clinicians; D024802:Nurse's Role / Q000523:psychology; D009723:Nurse-Patient Relations; D010349:Patient Compliance; D010353:Patient Education as Topic / Q000379:methods; D057240:Patient Preference; D018802:Patient-Centered Care / Q000379:methods*; D017410:Practice Guidelines as Topic; D057184:Practice Patterns, Nurses'; D036301:Qualitative Research; D013222:State Medicine / Q000592:standards; D006113:United Kingdom