Future of Specialist Practice Qualifications in district nursing for band 6 leadership roles

Abstract

District nurse numbers in the UK are rapidly declining. To overcome this severe staff shortage, one community trust in a rural county appointed ‘case managers’ (nurses without Specialist Practice Qualifications in district nursing [SPQDN]) in band 6 leadership roles that were traditionally held by district nurses. Here, we aimed to establish the value of the SPQDN to determine if there is a future for the conventionally accepted DN role, instead of case managers. The study used an exploratory mixed-methods design. Using the classic e-Delphi technique, data were collected over 5 months from 10 purposively sampled senior nurse managers employed by the community trust who formed an expert panel. In round one, the panellists provided three responses each to the question ‘what is the future for district nurse specialist practitioner qualifications in [the trust] for band 6 leadership roles?’ In rounds two and three, they answered a close-ended questionnaire using a 3-point Likert scale. The core findings suggest that SPQDN and the district nurse role are considered extremely valuable (both achieving 100% consensus). Additional findings are linked to four core themes, namely, (1) SPQDN, (2) clinical practice educators, (3) workforce and (4) leadership. This study recommends continued investment in SPQDN and the district nurse role with the use of succession planning for workforce management.

Identifying contextually relevant improvement measures, illustrated by a case of executive walkrounds

“…The Delphi technique allows participation based on both professional experience and expert knowledge (Njuangang et al, 2017;Carlin and Chesters, 2019). However, no single criterion is used to identify consensus and different researchers have applied divergent data collection and analysis tools (for example, Ni Riain et al, 2015; Ab Latif et al, 2016;Njuangang et al, 2017;Carlin and Chesters, 2019).…”

“…It has been used for over 50 years and combines the individual contributions of experts to produce group perspectives not otherwise attainable (Hasson et al, 2000;Stitt-Gohdes and Crews, 2004). The Delphi technique allows participation based on both professional experience and expert knowledge (Njuangang et al, 2017;Carlin and Chesters, 2019). However, no single criterion is used to identify consensus and different researchers have applied divergent data collection and analysis tools (for example, ni Riain et al, 2015;Ab Latif et al, 2016;Njuangang et al, 2017;Carlin and Chesters, 2019).…”

“…Furthermore, the heterogeneity of the participants' responses needed to be preserved by avoiding domination from professional hierarchies or force of personality (Hasson et al, 2000;Stitt-Gohdes and Crews, 2004). The modified Delphi technique used provides an iterative mixed methods approach (Carlin and Chesters, 2019) and is shown graphically in Figure 3, followed by a detailed description of each Delphi round.…”

“…This work supports matching metrics to context-specific improvement goals (Njuangang et al, 2017;Carlin and Chesters, 2019), and provides a method to accomplish this objective.…”