Nurse led care

doi:10.1136/bmj.330.7493.682

BMJ 2005;330:682-683 (26 March), doi:10.1136/bmj.330.7493.682

Editorial

Nurse led care

Determining long term effects is harder than measuring shortterm costs

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

What's the difference between medical and nursing care? Theanswer is not straightforward, but shortages in the medicalworkforce mean that nurses are increasingly called on to undertakework that was previously done by doctors (such as undertakingsurgery,¹ prescribing drugs, performing triage in emergencydepartments), whereas shortages in the nursing workforce meanthat healthcare assistants now do many tasks that nurses aretrained to do. This fluidity in professional roles and competenciesenables the health workforce to respond to need, but are outcomesfor patients being improved? Do these benefits come at an additionalcost, and if so, are they worth paying for?

Over the past decade, research has increasingly compared nurseled care with usual care for aspects of health care previouslydelivered by doctors. However, nurse led care does not haveone meaning. Nurse led care can be usefully viewed as a continuumwith, at one . . . [Full text of this article]

Nicky Cullum, professor

(nac2@york.ac.uk), Department of Health Sciences, University of York, York YO10 5DD

Karen Spilsbury, research fellow

Department of Health Sciences, University of York, York YO10 5DD

Gerry Richardson, research fellow

Centre for Health Economics, University of York, York YO10 5DD

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