Community nurses are “underrepresented” in research into integrated care, a new paper has found.
The paper, published in the Journal of Integrated Care, sought to identify what information exists about the experience of community nurses in the implementation of “collaborative models of care” in the UK.
“It’s clear that nurses and nurse leadership should be given a much greater voice”
Research paper
Gemma Prebble, a nurse lecturer at Bangor University in Wales, led on the paper alongside doctoral supervisor Dr David Evans.
Ms Prebble analysed existing research papers, opinion pieces, policies, guidelines and other publications to find out how far the topic had been looked into, and how much nurses were being centred in studies on integrated models of care.
These models – where multiple teams or providers work together to care for patients – sometimes involve the input of non-healthcare organisations such as housing providers or employers.
Ms Prebble’s paper concluded that, despite how important nurses are to developing these systems, there was a “paucity” of research that looked at the experiences of nurses and nursing leaders in implementing them.
“[The study] highlighted the complexity of the nursing role within implementation of integrated working, identifying both opportunities and challenges, but also drew attention to the tacit attributes that are important in the delivery and maintenance of integrated systems,” the paper stated.
Ms Prebble concluded that nurses were “underrepresented” in existing research on this topic.
“This is a concern because they are the ones who are on the frontline delivering care in the community and this means that the communities they’re serving aren’t being heard either,” she said.
“It’s clear that nurses and nurse leadership should be given a much greater voice when it comes to examining and developing the models used when implementing care in the community.
“For care in the community to be implemented effectively you need a whole host of people and organisations in very complex systems to work collaboratively.”
She said that poor communication between care organisation meant that “the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing”, and called for nurses to play a greater role in developing models of care.
