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Review of the literature & preparatory work
Objectives
- To appraise evidence on the impact of nurse consultant roles on patient and professional outcomes.
- To identify the extent to which existing studies have used quantitative or qualitative outcome measures, which address aspects of the proposed framework of impact.
- To identify patient and professional sensitive indicators which may be appropriate to demonstrating outcomes for nurse consultants.
- To further refine the proposed framework of impact for use in assessing the impact of nurse consultant roles.
The first stage in the project involved conducting an extensive review of existing literature. This review included two phases. Firstly, a comprehensive systematic literature review to examine existing quantitative and qualitative evidence exploring the impact of nurse consultant roles in the UK (see Outputs section for reference to published article), and secondly a pragmatic overview of selective literature exploring impact within other advance practice nursing roles (e.g. clinical nurse specialists, nurse practitioners) to identify the types of indicators of impact that may be appropriate to demonstrate outcomes for nurse consultants.
The team also gained ethical and R&D approval to conduct the research in the selected NHS organisations.