How practical nurses, registered nurses and nurse managers view practical nurses’ work activities

Abstract

<div lang="en" class="abs"><p class="abs_header">Abstract</p><p><em>Background:</em> There are no previous studies considering colleagues’ and nurse managers’ assessments of the work activities of practical nurses.</p><p><em>Aims:</em> To describe, analyse and compare the views of practical nurses, registered nurses and nurse managers on the work activities of practical nurses in adult somatic hospital wards.</p><p><em>Method:</em> This study uses a cross-sectional design with a self-administered questionnaire. The participants in the study were practical nurses (n=253), registered nurses (n=1627) and nurse managers (n=109). A total of 1,989 questionnaire links were sent out and 672 completed questionnaires were returned.</p><p><em>Results:</em> Nurse managers rated tasks as being the duties of PNs less often than the PNs themselves. In contrast registered nurses assume PNs do much more than they actually do. The responses of the different groups (practical nurses, registered nurses, and nurse managers) differed significantly in relation to more than half of the tasks.</p><p><em>Conclusion:</em> These results provide evidence-based information about the interface between registered nurses’ and practical nurses’ work and could be used when developing and organizing the work and to unify job descriptions in order to increase productivity and efficiency. </p></div>