NURSING FUNCTIONS, HEALTH STATUS, AND CLIENTS' AND NURSES' SATISFACTION WITH CLIENTS' PROGRESS AMONG OLDER PEOPLE RECEIVING HOME NURSING SERVICE (ELDERLY).
Contributors: Case Western Reserve University.
Published: 1986
Number of pages: 187
Subjects: Health Sciences, Nursing.; Gerontology.
Description: The purposes of this descriptive, correlational study were to identify relationships between home nursing practice and client health outcomes, and between client and nurse satisfaction with client progress, nursing practice, and client health outcomes.

Ten nursing functions were used to categorize nursing interventions representing the gamut of home nursing practice: assessment, coordination, counseling, evaluation, physical care, referral, supervision, support, teaching/demonstration and teaching/instruction. Ten variables depicting physical, social and psychological-emotional aspects of health status were: health, ease/difficulty and assistance in activities of daily living, energy, appetite, diet, sleep, satisfaction with personal and telephone visits, and coping. Satisfaction with client progress was measured from the perspectives of both clients and nurses. Schlotfeldt's paradigm for knowledge development provided the conceptual framework.

A convenience sample of 50 elderly clients of a home health agency in rural New England and 19 registered staff nurses of the agency participated in the study. Data were collected twice over a period not exceeding four months. Three instruments were developed by the investigator: two interview schedules (one each for clients and nurses) measuring self-reported health status, and a sheet on which nurses recorded functions used with clients at home.

Results of the study supported the relationships between the research variables. Using Pearson product-moment correlations, significant relationships were found between the nursing function support and the health status variables assistance and energy, between physical care and nurse-rated coping, and between physical care and satisfaction with telephone visits. Significant relationships were also found between client satisfaction with progress and physical care and support, and between nurse satisfaction and physical care. Client satisfaction was significantly related to health, ease/difficulty, assistance, energy, sleep and coping. Nurse satisfaction was significantly related to health and diet. Only one relationship was affected by modulating variables accounted for in the study, further supporting the relationships between research variables. Content validity of the research variables was verified by significant intercorrelations among both the nursing functions and the health status variables.
Notes: Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 47-07, Section: B, page: 2835.

Thesis (PH.D.)--CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY, 1986.

School code: 0042.