Comparison of the traditional and block mode of delivery on undergraduate nursing students' perceived levels of preparedness to use evidence-based practice: a two-group experimental study.

Objectives: To examine how delivery time impacted on undergraduate nursing students' preparedness for evidence-based practice (EBP) by comparing the traditional semester mode and block mode of delivery models.

Methods: This two-group experimental study compared the traditional semester and block modes of delivery using a self-reported questionnaire. The factor of time was the variable in relation to learning with the block mode delivery being in a compressed timeframe.

Care coordination for chronic and complex health conditions: An experienced based co-design study engaging consumer and clinician groups for service improvement.

Background: Evidence shows that engaging consumers and clinicians in development of health services creates a more responsive, integrated service that better meets the needs of consumers and the community of practice it serves. Further, consumer and clinician participation in service development processes can boost confidence and motivation levels in organisational employees and help foster clinical accountability.

Objective: To see where consumers' care experiences could be improved by better understanding where care coordination organisational systems needed improvement.

Activity-based funding for safety and quality: A policy discussion of issues and directions for nursing-focused health services outcomes research.

Aims: A discussion of the implications and opportunities arising from the Commonwealth of Australia health care reform agenda; linking pricing with quality, with particular reference to directions for nursing-focused health services outcomes research directed to improve the safety and quality of health care practices.

Background: National activity-based funding in Australia is a policy-focused development. As the relationship between cost and quality becomes apparent, the role of clinicians and their contribution to high quality care has become a pressing issue for leadership, teaching, and research.

Building workforce capacity for complex care coordination: a function analysis of workflow activity.

Background: The care coordination workforce includes a range of clinicians who manage care for patients with multiple chronic conditions both within and outside a hospital, in the community, or in a patient's home. These patients require a multi-skilled approach to support complex care and social support needs as they are typically high users of health, community, and social services. In Australia, workforce structures have not kept pace with this new and emerging workforce.

Nursing-sensitive indicators: a concept analysis.

Aim: To report a concept analysis of nursing-sensitive indicators within the applied context of the acute care setting.

Background: The concept of 'nursing sensitive indicators' is valuable to elaborate nursing care performance. The conceptual foundation, theoretical role, meaning, use and interpretation of the concept tend to differ.

Nurse staff allocation by nurse patient ratio vs. a computerized nurse dependency management system: a comparative cost analysis of Australian and New Zealand hospitals.

Coding, costing, and accounting for nursing care requirements in Australian public and private hospitals lacks systematic research. Nurse costing for two nurse staffing allocation methods--nurse patient ratios and a computerized nurse dependency management system--were compared. Retrospective nursing workload management data were obtained from hospital information systems in 21 acute care public and private hospitals in Australia and New Zealand.

Status of costing hospital nursing work within Australian casemix activity-based funding policy.

Australia has a long history of patient level costing initiated when casemix funding was implemented in several states in the early 1990s. Australia includes, to some extent, hospital payment based on nursing intensity adopted within casemix funding policy and the Diagnostic Related Group system. Costing of hospital nursing services in Australia has not changed significantly in the last few decades despite widespread introduction of casemix funding policy at the state level.

Foundations for a nursing services reference model.

The Nursing Services Reference Model (NSRM) is presented as a theoretical position and discussion paper. The aims are to describe the components of the NSRM concept, to explain why such a model needs to be developed and to explore methodological issues in the development of a NSRM. The concept is important to address as it may illuminate a most pressing problem faced by the Australian health care industry where the content and activity of nursing practice is not embedded as computer processable data in health information system structures.

Implementation issues for mobile-wireless infrastructure and mobile health care computing devices for a hospital ward setting.

mWard is a project whose purpose is to enhance existing clinical and administrative decision support and to consider mobile computers, connected via wireless network, for bringing clinical information to the point of care. The mWard project allowed a limited number of users to test and evaluate a selected range of mobile-wireless infrastructure and mobile health care computing devices at the neuroscience ward at Southern Health's Monash Medical Centre, Victoria, Australia. Before the project commenced, the ward had two PC's which were used as terminals by all ward-based staff and numerous multi-disciplinary staff who visited the ward each day.

An evaluation of a wellness guide for older carers living in the community.

Objective: To assess the usefulness and effectiveness of a wellness guide and to identify whether its use by a group of older "new" carers would make them healthier and knowledgeable of community resources.

Design And Sample: Pretest, posttest measures of physical and mental health and a questionnaire with associated focus groups. A purposive sample of 21 older carers who were "new" carers was selected for the study.

Using clinical data for nursing research and management in health services.

Nurses generate large quantities of data at different operational levels in a health service organization. Administrative managerial data include the number of nursing hours per patient day and cost data related to nursing services while clinical data include the documentation of direct patient care only. In this paper, we explain standard clinical data elements in the HIS (Hospital Information System).

An analysis of high-cost users at an Australian public health service organization.

High-cost users generate extremely high costs when compared with average users in the same diagnostic-related group (DRG). They represent a major financial loss for a health service organization. The research was conducted using an area health service patient database for online analytical processing to produce descriptive statistics and graphs of 'high-cost' and 'non-high-cost users'.

Wireless communications in acute health-care.

Before a particular form of wireless communication is implemented within a health-care institution, consideration should be given to the system's capacity for transmitting voice, data and video information, as well as its reliability and coverage. An important associated choice concerns the best combination of user devices that will enable secure and rapid transmission of data to clinical staff at the point of care. Several technologies are available.

The "managed care" idea: implications for health service systems in Australia.

The growth of corporatism in health-care in the US, and the consequences arising from US models of health-care delivery systems provide an enormously valuable point of comparison with health systems of other developed economies, such as Australia. If lessons are to be learnt from the US, then an analysis of the structure and performance of the US health-care system provides important background for understanding and assessing contemporary policy changes to administrative and organizational designs and techniques for patient care in Australia.