Abstract
Overview: It has become increasingly important for registered nurses to demonstrate their worth, especially in ambulatory care settings, where administrators seeking to cut budgets often replace RNs with less-qualified, lower-paid staff. The research presented here was conducted by primary care nurses in a major medical center who were facing such a dilemma. They devised a study that entailed
* interviewing selected current patients based on their health histories and the health histories of their family members.
* teaching the patients about conditions affecting them and their families.
* inquiring whether family members were receiving health care.
* referring both the interviewees and their family members to services at their facility, Montefiore Medical Center (MMC), for preventive care or treatment of current health problems.
* tracking any appointments that the interviewee or a family member kept within six months of the interview.
Fifty patients were interviewed over a six-month study period; the nurses recorded a total of 138 family members living with patients. Ninety-four percent of the patients interviewed agreed to make appointments for their family members; 82% made appointments that were actually kept by their family members. A total of 257 appointments were made and kept subsequent to the original 50 interviews, with an average of more than five visits per family. Eighty-nine percent of these visits were by patients not previously enrolled at MMC.
The nurses' study had three aims: to offer excellent care to the nurses' existing patients, to increase their satisfaction with their work as primary care nurses, and to help fulfill institutional mandates to recruit new patients. The nurses also hoped their data would serve to quantify their contribution to recruiting patients to MMC. These goals were met by the nurses' study, which suggests that teaching current patients about their own health histories and those of their family members is a powerful strategy for recruiting patients to the ambulatory care setting.
A group of primary care nurses demonstrates that nursing interventions can help to recruit patients.