Primary Nursing: Can It Improve Patient Education

摘要

Primary nursing is examined as a practice mode and as an organizational innovation that can foster patient education within inpatient units. Originating at the University of Minnesota Hospital in 1969, primary nursing is basically a return to the case method of assignment, with each nurse carrying a case load of four to eight patients. The nurse is responsible, over a 24-hour period, for collection of the nursing assessment data and preparation and maintenance of the plans for nursing care delivery and evaluation. The literature on primary nursing suggests that it increases nurse-physician and nurse-nurse communication and improves nurse-patient communication, as compared to team-teaching methods. Primary nursing also enhances comprehensiveness and continuity of services and ensures that nurses do more nursing than administrative work. The head nurse, when relieved of unit management responsibilities, helps th primary nurse meet both organizational and individual nurse-patient educational goals by providing the primary nurse with a clinical role model and resource person.