Do more with less: strategies for improving productivity in community health nursing

Nursing productivity in all types of health care organizations is difficult to define and to measure. However, the difficulty of the task must not deter the first-line nurse supervisor from the task. The process of defining and measuring productivity will help Eve to develop the strategies needed to solve her dilemma. This critical activity will help to ensure the nurses' survival in today's tight economic climate and create a vision of the nurse's place in the health care setting of the future. Before data collection methods and productivity expectations can be standardized in community health nursing, nurses must communicate, through publication, their concerns regarding nursing productivity, their data collection methods, and their productivity expectations so that the methods and expectations can be standardized. Such cross-fertilization of ideas is an essential part of the process of managing nurse productivity.