About the Census
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Community Nurses Measure Up A national one day census, developed by nurses for nurses. Thursday 24th April 2008
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The community nursing team census is a collaborative initiative commissioned by ISD's Data Development Programme and the Scottish Governments eHealth Programme, which aims to capture information about what community nurses and their support teams do, to whom and why. This will include health problems, interventions and other patient related information. It is intended that this information will be used to inform the development of the Electronic Health Record. which in turn will support nurses in making decisions about how best to deliver, plan and evaluate care.
"The more information that is available, the better informed decisions will be on what is needed to deliver services in the community. A key objective is to develop a standard language to reflect the diversity and complexity of community nursing, and this census could be a first step in achieving that"
Theresa Fyffe, Director, RCN Scotland
Little is known Nationally or at Health Board level about what community nursing teams actually do and how their work is distributed within their teams. Currently contact information if collected by some Health Boards in the form of ISDS29/30, however it does not provide information that is useful to the service and is not considered of sufficient quality or completeness to utilise on a national basis.
The census will provide baseline data and will make visible the diversity and complexity of community nursing activity.
The data will be collected, analysed and reported on at national level by ISD. As this data is your information we will also make it available at local level for your own interpretation.
Other benefits of the census are detailed in the document: Benefits of the Community Nursing Team Census 
(259kb). We also have an information leaflet (1.29mb) which can be printed for circulation.
The census includes all community nursing staff and their support teams; Health Visiting, District Nursing, School Nursing and Treatment Room Nurses (employed by the health board). This also includes community staff nurses, healthcare assistants and nursery nurses, but excludes out of hours, evening nurses, practice nurses, community paediatric nurses, community psychiatric nurses, community midwives and clinical nurse specialists.
All staff working on the 24th April 2008 during core day-time hours (i.e. between 8:00 and 17:00) are required to participate and complete the census.
What are we asking nursing staff to do?
We are asking you to supply us with information detailing the type of patient and non-patient related work that you carried out on the 24th April 2008. A web based system is currently in development and will be made available via NHSNet for all staff to access and input their information. Staff will be given until the 7th May 2008 (10 days) to complete and submit their information.
If IT access is an issue in your area then please contact the Census Support Team as soon as possible, so that we can advise you on a possible solution.
The census questionnaire will be a web-based form, which can be completed and submitted online
There are many other nursing projects and initiatives taking place just now.
Two current projects with links to the census are the National Nursing and Midwifery Workforce and Workload Planning Project (NNMWWPP) and the Clinical Quality Indicators Project (CQI).
The NNMWWPP aims to identify resource and capacity planning while the CQI project will capture and detail the current practices embedded within patient care. The CQI Project will be rolled out in the acute sector from 1st April 2008 and will eventually cascade in the community.
These nursing focussed projects along with the nurse census will ensure a triangulation approach providing:
Resource and Capacity information through NNMWWPP
Quality of Work through CQI
An understanding of the complexity of direct and in-direct patient care provision through the Community Nursing Team Census
The Scottish Government's eHealth Programme has made a commitment to achieve comprehensive health information systems built around the EHR. This commitment and key actions and recommendations identified in the following policies has reinforced the requirement for appropriate and robust community nursing information.
- NHSScotland eHealth Strategy, SEHD
- Better Health, Better Care: Action Plan, SGHD(2007)
- Visible, Accessible, Integrated Care: Report of the Review of Nursing in the Community, SEHD
Other factors that have prompted the need to collect national data are the recent agreements to discontinue the collection of national data by the current methods primarily Practice Team Information (PTI) and Community Nursing Statistics (ISD(S)29/30, pending the success of the nursing census).
Data Development
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