Scottish Community Nursing Census

It was recognised that there is a need to better understand community nursing in Scotland and effectively capture its diversity and complexity.

To address this, a Community Nursing Census (Community Nurses Measure Up) was commissioned by the Scottish Government and NSS ISD Scotland to capture data about patient and clinical needs and to develop a minimum dataset based on a standardised terminology.

The census covered district nursing, health visiting, school nursing, family health nursing and treatment room nursing during the core daytime hours. It identified the skill mix of teams, patient problems, associated care aims, interventions, medical diagnosis and type and location of contacts.

The census was carried out on 24th April 2008 using a web-based data capture tool. Its key findings were:

• Of the eligible staff working on census day 3,385 (74%) completed the census form and saw 29,145 patients in individual, group or clinic contacts. This equates to one person in 177 of the Scottish population.

• Almost one third of nurses recorded the main care aim for individual patients as maintenance care.

• Out of 21 categories for nursing intervention, the highest reported was for skin/wound care. Long-term condition management was the second most recorded intervention category.

The census data provides better intelligence on current service provision and forms a baseline for measuring future changes in community nursing both nationally and locally. The data collection tool and minimum dataset will be refined and made available to local areas for future use to support information sharing and reuse of information recorded for care purposes.

The full census report is available for download from http://www.isdscotland.org/isd/5830.html