title: Unfinished nursing care: An important performance measure for nursing care systems.
abstract: Performance measurement is a core administrative function and an essential component of organizational quality programs. The prevalence of performance measurement initiatives increased significantly after the release of the Institute of Medicine series on quality. Nursing performance measures are limited in their scope, resulting in an underrepresentation of process measures. Development of performance indicators that reflect how effectively organizational units actually transform nursing resources into nursing services should be a high priority. Unfinished nursing care is a nursing process performance measure that reflects the complexity of the nursing care environment and can be useful in comparing process performance across systems and organizations. Unfinished nursing care is congruent with many of the National Quality Forum requirements for endorsement and warrants further refinement as an important nurse-sensitive performance measure.
authors: The University of Texas at Austin School of Nursing, San Antonio, TX. Electronic address: cvanfosson@utexas.edu.
authors: Christopher A
authors: CA
authors: VanFosson
authors: The University of Texas at Austin School of Nursing, San Antonio, TX.
authors: Terry L
authors: TL
authors: Jones
authors: The University of Texas at Austin School of Nursing, San Antonio, TX.
authors: Linda H
authors: LH
authors: Yoder
mesh_terms: D004650:Employee Performance Appraisal; D015276:Health Care Rationing; D006801:Humans; D009732:Nursing Care; D017063:Outcome Assessment, Health Care; D011787:Quality of Health Care
keywords: Implicit rationing; Missed care; Nursing care performance framework; Nursing quality; Performance measurement; Tasks undone; Unfinished nursing care