Activities and interventions in General nursing. The majority of studies pertaining to nursing activities and interventions focused on the care of adult patients in different clinical settings other than A&E Departments with the aim of investigating the activities undertaken by RNs in the delivery of nursing care (Table 2.4). There were many reasons identified by the researchers for undertaking such studies in what was primarily adult nursing, some of which were financial (Abbey et al 2011, Xxxxxxxx et al 2008). For example, there were fears that the UK government would cut spending by 0.9% percent by 2015, accompanied by a 4% productivity saving (Xxxxxxx 2011) which would impact on the nursing workforce and the availability of training and professional development for nurses. Because of this, many studies concentrated on the activities and interventions of clinicians working in different clinical areas in an effort to justify their existence and contribution to patient care. In an effort to describe the activities and interventions of clinicians in the US, XxXxxxxxx et al (1998) utilised the Nursing Intervention Classification (NIC). However, although described by the researchers as suitable for all settings, including paediatrics, this study focused primarily on adult nursing. The study ;involved an investigation into 40 clinical specialty organisations using self- completed postal questionnaires (response rate 82%) to explore interventions core to each area of specialty practice. This was an old study from the US, but proved useful in determining how often nursing interventions were undertaken in each specialist area of practice. The study included an extensive list of 443 interventions and included clinicians involved in current practice. From this, the researchers confirmed that pain management was the most frequently undertaken activity (19 organisations), followed by documentation (18 organisations), emotional support (18 organisations) and discharge planning (17 organisations). The majority of interventions (96%) were identified as core by at least one specialty and only 3% were not listed as core to any specialty, suggesting some generic interventions common to multiple specialties. The suggested benefits of the NIC included the ability for nurses to be able to communicate the interventions associated with different practice areas. The researchers recommended that future studies should include the outcomes, costs and prevalence of multi-tasking associated with each intervention. Nonetheless, thi...
