Nursing Effort and the Exchanging Human Response Pattern

Abstract

This descriptive, compariitive study was done t o determine the nursing effort required to treat actual and potential nursing diagnoses from the Exchanging Human Response Pattern in two patient care specialties: acute medical-sui-gical and postpartum. Patterns of diagnosis identification are described for the t w o groups, and differences in allocation of nursing resources (nursing effort) are examined. The sample included 200 observations (hospital days) for 50 patients: 33 postpartum patients, and 17 medical-surgical patients. Data were collected daily during the study pericid by nurses who provided direct care to the selected patients using an irivestigator-deuelope~l version of the Nurse-Patient Suiiimary (NPS) nursing information and patient classification tool (Halloran. 1985). Potential nursing diagnoses received most of the nursing effort in the postpartum area (mean effort = 5.28). whereas actual nursing diagnoses in the Exchanging Human Response Pattern received a higher priority in the medical-surgical area (mean effort = 12.03). Statistically significant differences existed between groups in total nursing effort (I = -4.73, p < ,0001) and in nursing effort required t o treat actual (t = -7.42, p < ,0001) and potential diagnoses (t = 3.99, p < .0001) in the Exchanging Human Response Pattern. This study provides unique informition almit how nurses allocate their time t o patients for the treatment of actual arid potential nursing diagnoses, and outlines areas for further (levelopnient in diagnosis-based patient classification.