The retention of training doctors in the Irish health system.

Background: There is limited quantitative evidence on the migration patterns of training doctors in Ireland. The aim of this study is to estimate the number of trainee doctors leaving the Irish health system and the numbers returning.

Methods: This study uses administrative data to track the migration patterns of Irish trained doctors at various career stages.

Validity, reliability and utility of the Irish Nursing Minimum Data Set for General Nursing in investigating the effectiveness of nursing interventions in a general nursing setting: A repeated measures design.

Background: Internationally, nursing professionals are coming under increasing pressure to highlight the contribution they make to health care and patient outcomes. Despite this, difficulties exist in the provision of quality information aimed at describing nursing work in sufficient detail. The Irish Minimum Data Set for General Nursing is a new nursing data collection system aimed at highlighting the contribution of nursing to patient care.

Is the Community Attitudes towards the Mentally Ill scale valid for use in the investigation of European nurses' attitudes towards the mentally ill? A confirmatory factor analytic approach.

Aim: This study aimed to assess the construct validity of the Community Attitudes towards the Mentally Ill scale in the investigation of European nurses' attitudes towards mental illness and mental health patients.

Background: The harbouring of negative attitudes by nurses towards any patient can have implications for recovery. To gather robust evidence upon which to base information and education aimed at fostering acceptance, support and general positivity towards people with mental health illness, a valid and reliable system of data collection is required.

Seen as core: a Delphi consensus study of essential elements of mental health nursing care in Ireland.

Continued ambiguity about the scope of mental health nursing is harmful to the discipline's identity and to patients' interests. Using a Delphi survey design, consensus was achieved on a set of 70 items representing core elements of mental health nursing among a sample of 150 mental health nurses working in Ireland. Items achieving consensus in Round 3 of the survey were composed of 28 clinical phenomena (framed as client problems), 18 direct and 12 indirect nursing interventions, and 12 nursing-sensitive outcomes of care.

The Irish Nursing Minimum Data Set for mental health--a valid and reliable tool for the collection of standardised nursing data.

Aims And Objectives: To test the validity and reliability of the newly developed Irish Nursing Minimum Data Set for mental health (I-NMDS (MH)) to ensure its clinical usability.

Background: Internationally, difficulties exist in defining the contribution mental health nursing makes to patient care. Structured information systems, like the Nursing Minimum Data Set, have been developed internationally to gather standardised information to increase the visibility of nursing in the health care system.

Ambiguities and conflicting results: the limitations of the kappa statistic in establishing the interrater reliability of the Irish nursing minimum data set for mental health: a discussion paper.

Background: In a study to establish the interrater reliability of the Irish Nursing Minimum Data Set (I-NMDS) for mental health difficulties relating to the choice of reliability test statistic were encountered.

Objectives: The objective of this paper is to highlight the difficulties associated with testing interrater reliability for an ordinal scale using a relatively homogenous sample and the recommended kw statistic.

Method: One pair of mental health nurses completed the I-NMDS for mental health for a total of 30 clients attending a mental health day centre over a two-week period.

Reconsidering the conceptualization of nursing workload: literature review.

Aim: This paper reports a literature review that aimed to analyse the way in which nursing intensity and patient dependency have been considered to be conceptually similar to nursing workload, and to propose a model to show how these concepts actually differ in both theoretical and practical terms.

Background: The literature on nursing workload considers the concepts of patient 'dependency' and nursing 'intensity' in the realm of nursing workload. These concepts differ by definition but are used to measure the same phenomenon, i.

Developing a data dictionary for the irish nursing minimum dataset.

One of the challenges in health care in Ireland is the relatively slow acceptance of standardised clinical information systems. Yet the national Irish health reform programme indicates that an Electronic Health Care Record (EHCR) will be implemented on a phased basis. [3-5].