DEVELOPMENT OF A DEFINITION OF THE ROLES AND FUNCTIONS OF NURSE CASE MANAGERS IN ACUTE CARE SETTINGS.
Contributors: University of Alabama at Birmingham.
Published: 1994
Number of pages: 153
Subjects: Health Sciences, Nursing.
Description: Due to financial and resource constraints, health care organizations are becoming more aware of the need to provide quality, cost-efficient care. One mechanism for doing this is through the use of nursing case management. Many case management programs have been developed, but the role of the nurse case manager is poorly defined. The purpose of this study was to develop a definition of the roles and functions of nurse case managers in acute care settings.

Content analysis of position descriptions for nurse case managers provided information related to the role functions. These position descriptions were content analyzed, and the functions were categorized using Bower's categories (1992). Questionnaires were developed using the categorized role functions, and nurse case managers were asked to respond to the frequency with which these functions occurred in their practice. They were also asked to identify which of the five traditional roles of the nurse applied to their practice. Organizational and personal demographics were also obtained.

The data analysis provided a snapshot of the nurse case managers in the VHA institutions. These case managers were Registered Nurses with a Bachelors Degree in Nursing and more than 16 years of experience in nursing. They primarily worked in community hospitals that were licensed for and operated between 200-299 beds. The most common case-managed casetype was orthopedics, with cardiology/cardiovascular surgery a close second. The data analysis resulted in the validation of 72 of a possible 94 role functions, as well as validation of all five roles of the nurse as roles for nurse case managers. Final validation of the role functions was obtained from a panel of content experts in nursing case management. The final result was a list of 67 role functions considered by the content experts to be representative of the role functions of nurse case managers in acute care settings.
Notes: Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 55-08, Section: B, page: 3236.

Thesis (D.S.N.)--UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA AT BIRMINGHAM, 1994.

School code: 0005.