Collaboration in Advanced Practice Nursing - Essay Example

Nies, Cook, Bach, et.al. (2009) tell us that measuring health care outcomes is important. However, to do this, there must be a common definition of what a care delivery outcome is. To help provide that definition, as well as identifying potential outcomes relevant to advanced practice, a concept analysis has been done. Walker and Avant originally brought about the use of concept analysis for nursing. They wanted to bring a common language to the many concepts that nursing used in their professions.

A concept analysis should be done at anytime that a concept is not clear and well understood. There are other methods which can be used, concept synthesis and concept derivation. Concept synthesis is used when there are concepts that require development based on evidence that has been presented (McEwen & Wills, 2007). When concept derivation is used it usually comes from a perspective as there is little available to lead the researcher in the right direction. There are several steps identified in McEwen and Wills, (2007) in performing a concept analysis. . The concept selected as stated earlier is "Concept analysis of outcomes for Advanced Practice Nursing.". The authors relayed the determination of their aims and purposes for the analysis to the reader through the use of a historical approach to outcomes and definitions to help define the concept and the language to be used.

The history tells the reader that outcomes have been measured since the time of Florence Nightingale and that those outcomes at that time were mortality and morbidity, post op days, complication rates etc. Then there was benchmarking and outcomes became more defined from several perspectives, including those of clinical, economical, medical and humanistic. Many of those same things are used now including symptom control, rehospitalization, dissatisfaction, frequency of any particular service and safety.

Definitions were given to us by these authors to assure that the reader was using the same language. There is discussion to say that the term outcome is used in a variety of contexts and that it is not always used in the same concepts therefore, unless defined, it may be difficult to use. The author tells us that for the use of this analysis the work outcome means coming out of or resulting from the use of a process (Nies, et.al., 2009). An outcome may also be a consequence, aftereffect, aftermath, issue or event.

Defining attributes in this concept analysis were defined as the characteristics of a concept that recurs in the usage of a term (Nies, et.al., 2009). Outcomes are the end result. Outcomes require some action to produce and within that action there must be a temporal component that provides an end result. In giving a model of outcomes it was determined that it would include an event, a