Nursing leaders predict top trends for 2000.

Nursing Management's Editorial Advisory Board predicts the top 10 trends that will impact nurse leaders in 2000. Use them to lead in the new millennium.

Competencies of effective and efficient home care nurses.

The abilities of effective and efficient home care nurses include the action-oriented implementation of knowledge and intellectual skills, including the application of psychomotor skills. These abilities have been translated into competencies and then quantified into a classification of seven categories of practice, with key elements for each category. Since all home care nurses should be assessed against valid and reliable competencies, this tool can prove useful to managers as they assess and improve competencies of staff RNs.

Beyond the textbook: journals as primary readings for a nursing management course.

To emphasize an up-to-the-minute management focus, highlight current issues facing nurse managers, and expose students to the value of reading professional nursing journals, the required readings for a baccalaureate nursing management class were changed from the traditional textbook to a package of 12 concurrent issues of a current nursing management journal. The goals of the course, the advantages and disadvantages of the change to journals, and recommendations regarding the exclusive use of a specific journal are described.

Productivity in home healthcare: part I: assessing nurse effectiveness and efficiency.

Herein described is a profile of the specific knowledge and abilities of the productive home care RN that nurse managers can use in maintaining and developing an RN staff that is efficient and effective. This article describes the profile and shows how it can be used in the hiring process, during orientation, and on a day-to-day basis to manage and improve the productivity of current staff members.

Component analysis of productivity in home care RNs.

The purpose of this study was to develop a productivity measurement method applicable to home health care registered nurses (RNs) by identifying and quantifying the areas of knowledge and ability that define productive nursing practice in home health care. A descriptive, correlational design using qualitative and quantitative methods of data collection and analysis identified 35 knowledge and ability variables that grouped into seven dimensions: Client/Family Management, Practice Management, Knowledge/Skill Maintenance, Communication, Nursing Process, Written Documentation, and Home Health Care Knowledge. There were no significant differences in productivity variables among four major types of agencies. Among agencies considered preeminent, intellectual skills appeared to be of greater importance to productive practice than direct-care skills. The seven productivity dimensions that emerged from this study show promise in providing 1) a theoretical basis for understanding the knowledge and abilities associated with RN productivity in the home health setting, 2) a description of nurse inputs in a home health services productivity model, and 3) a reality-based measurement tool that has utility in managing RN productivity in home health care.