Trust and decision-making: How nurses in Australian general practice negotiate role limitations.

Aim: To explore the importance of role recognition and relationships between the opportunities for decision-making, social support, and skill development, in a sample of nurses working in general practice in New South Wales, Australia.

Background: Understanding how nurses make decisions about patients and their care in general practice will benefit organisations and public policy. This understanding is important as the role changes and opportunities for further role development emerge.

Methods of measuring nursing workload in Australia.

Continuing and worsening nurse shortages nationally and internationally have reignited the debate in Australia about the methods of measuring nursing workload. As workload is one of the most significant factors in nursing retention, measuring nursing workload reliably is the critical initial step to understanding the relationship between workload, nursing retention and patient safety. In Australia, some states and territories have no measure of nursing workload and those states that have introduced measurement methods are inconsistent in their approach.

Nursing skill mix and nursing time: the roles of registered nurses and clinical nurse specialists.

Objective: The roles of clinical nurse specialists (CNS) and registered nurses, while similar, should also be quite different, with the CNS functioning as an advanced practice nurse. Differences in roles can be partially explained and understood by examining the use of their time. Adjustments to skill mix usually involve using more plentiful but less-skilled workers, and there is a growing body of overseas research in this field.