Nursing Practice Council : literature review, implementation, and evaluation plan

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to outline an implementation and evaluation plan for the establishment of a Nursing Practice Council (NPC) for the public health and registered nurses in a small rural health unit in southern Ontario. A NPC is a formal, employer-supported structure, consisting of a representative group of front line nurses, and its purpose is to enhance the practice and work environment for nurses by providing access to peer support and creating a forum for discussion and decision making regarding nursing practice issues. The resulting enhanced nursing practice environment may lead to benefits to the patient through improved care and benefits for the organization such as improved nurse recruitment and retention. In this paper, a health promotion program planning and evaluation framework will be utilized to plan, implement and evaluate a NPC for the Haldimand Norfolk Health Unit (HNHU), located in southern Ontario. As the NPC is not a true health promotion program per se, the evaluation framework for its development and implementation has been modified to suit this project. By using this modified framework, a step by step plan can be developed, which will facilitate the identification of enabling factors and barriers as well as provide information for the implementation evaluation strategies throughout the process. Consequently, timely corrections to the process can be made during implementation which will in turn assist the project to succeed. The evaluation will seek to identify the benefits to the nurses and the organization. In this paper, information is provided on a review of current literature regarding the status of public health nursing in Ontario and the concepts and models related to NPCs (section 2); the goal of the paper (section 3); an overview of the project (section 4); the project implementation plan (section 5); the proposed evaluation framework (section 6); and the implications for public health practice and policy (section 7).