Fundamental Care's state of knowledge around the world: Where are we now? A scoping review

Abstract

Aims: To investigate and describe the current state of knowledge about Fundamental Care in terms of population, contexts, concepts and gaps. Design: A scoping review. Data sources: CINAHL, Medline, PsycINFO and EMBASE databases were searched in April 2021 for eligible literature, published from January 2010, onwards. Review Methods: This scoping review was built around the recommendations of Peters et al. (2020 version). Two researchers conducted the literature search, and three researchers independently screened the titles and abstracts of the retrieved studies' data, using the eligibility criteria and the review questions as a guide. Results: The search yielded 763 records, of which 107 were included. Results are presented under seven subheadings: (a) Countries and Continents, (b) Context, (c) Research Design, (d) Publishing/Journal, (e) Participants and Population, (f) Keywords and (g) Fundamental of Care Framework and Practice Process. All the retrieved articles describe the current state of knowledge about Fundamental Care in terms of population, contexts, concepts and gaps. Conclusion: This scoping review highlighted the elevated number of articles that have been published since the beginning of the work on Fundamental Care, 10 years ago.The included articles are related to different dimensions of research, practice and teaching and to the Fundamentals of Nursing Care, but also to nursing theory. Finally, most of the articles had a nursing focus. Impact:The results of this scoping review allow us to highlight the work from the past 10 years. This may be of interest to learn more about the research surrounding Fundamental Care. This scoping review allows us to better target the theoretical and empirical developments to focus on in the coming years.

What about the fundamentals of nursing—its interventions and its continuity among older people in need of home- or facility-based care: a scoping review

“…Lacking teamwork, an optimal communication, and coordination of care [ 68 *, 72 *, 73 *, 79 *, 85 *, 92 *, 97 *] together with the already earlier mentioned description of understaffed, underequipped, and under-resourced home- and facility-based care contexts further supports such conclusions. However, less is known because the research focusing on fundamental nursing pinpoints a lack of conducted research targeting home- and facility-based care contexts [ 124 ]. The scarcity of nursing research focusing on continuous and comprehensive fundamental nursing gives the incentive to explore both home- and facility-based contexts and older persons’ fundamental nursing needs and their relatives’ experiences of fundamental nursing or lack thereof.…”

Fundamental care: An evolutionary concept analysis

“…Exploring the link between fundamental care and patient outcomes and cost correlation is another area that need to be studied. When fundamental care is delivered in an inappropriate way, this affects patient safety and wellbeing, compromises communication, emotional support, reciprocal dignity and ultimately respect (Feo & Kitson, 2016; Savoie et al, 2022). Considering the impactful consequences of fundamental care delivery described in this concept analysis (e.g.…”

“…All health professionals, as well as the society in general ought to be more aware of fundamentals of care and value it more (Conroy, 2018;Kitson et al, 2019;Kitson 2016). Despite this, this concept is inconsistently defined and inadequately described and studied (Savoie et al, 2022). Given the relevance of this topic, it becomes essential to reach a clear and agreed definition of what This definition of fundamental care will assist nurse leaders and researchers to promote and enhance the examination and application of fundamental care in clinical practice to ensure better care outcomes across all healthcare settings.…”

“…basic care, concept analysis, fundamental care, fundamentals of care, nursing, nursing leadership, nursing basic care fundamental care is to provide a strong rationale that values these elements of care encounter and to target future interventions providing effective nursing care outcomes (Feo, Donnelly, et al, 2018;Muntlin Athlin, 2018). The need of such concept analysis was also highlighted in several studies (Feo, Donnelly, et al, 2018;Kitson et al, 2010;Savoie et al, 2022) showing that patients' outcomes are often sensitive to fundamental care (Conroy et al, 2021;Kitson, Dow, et al, 2013;Kitson, Robertson-Malt, & Conroy, 2013;Savoie et al, 2022;Vollman, 2013). Therefore, having a clear and agreed definition of this concept, could also provide nursing leaders from different settings (practice, education, research) with means to develop policies ensuring that fundamental care is properly fulfilled and disbursed by clinical nurses.…”

“…All health professionals, as well as the society in general ought to be more aware of fundamentals of care and value it more (Conroy, 2018; Kitson et al, 2019; Kitson 2016). Despite this, this concept is inconsistently defined and inadequately described and studied (Savoie et al, 2022). Given the relevance of this topic, it becomes essential to reach a clear and agreed definition of what fundamental care is to provide a strong rationale that values these elements of care encounter and to target future interventions providing effective nursing care outcomes (Feo, Donnelly, et al, 2018; Muntlin Athlin, 2018).…”