Indicators of effectiveness – exposing the range, robustness and relevance of outcome measures for the evaluation of Nursing and Midwifery Practice: A literature review

Background

There are few collations of outcome measures used to evaluate UK nursing and midwifery practice. This paper makes a clear contribution to our existing knowledge by exposing the range and robustness of outcome measure available in the evaluation of nursing and midwifery practice. The review questions answered in this paper are:

• 1)

  what patient outcome measures have been used in studies of nursing and midwifery practice in the UK within the last decade?

• 2)

  to what extent have the instruments been tested in the UK for validity and reliability with the respective patient populations?

The review was conducted in 2002/3.

Methods

Conventional methods for systematic reviews guided this work. These included: 1) defining terms to be used in the review, 2) searching for published and grey literature relevant to the two review questions, 3) selecting studies from this literature that would help to answer the review questions, 4) appraising studies to further determine their rigor and appropriateness in answering the review questions and 5) synthesising the findings to enable a comprehensive view of outcome measures used to evaluate nursing and midwifery to be formed.

Results and Conclusions

This systematic review identified numerous patient outcome measures, across a range of specialisms, available for the assessment of nursing and midwifery practice in the UK. The review also highlighted the extent to which the instruments have been tested in the UK for validity and reliability and showed the need for further testing of new instruments. The development of qualitative tools, which may also be suited to the evaluation of nursing and midwifery practice both within the UK and the wider international arena, was identified as an area for future work.