Independent Nurse: Opinion - Onus on us to prove worth of our services.

Why have we taken so long to think seriously about ways of measuring the quality of nursing care in the home? For years, we have delivered, measured and judged community services on the basis of how many people are involved (headcount) or how many are seen (contacts).

Both are irrelevant. A big team could give poor care; a team that sees dozens of people a week could be saving lots of lives or having fleeting, meaningless contact with half the town.

Not that people haven't tried to improve quality measures over the years. The QNI's survey of district nurses, reported in our 2020 Vision report, found that, although many organisations were still using headcount and …