Changing traditional nursing home roles to nursing case management

1. The role of nursing case manager described here was derived from the concept of primary nursing in acute care, team nursing, and the community-based social service role. 2. Nurses in nursing homes often function within a bureaucratic, physician advocate role instead of within a professional, patient advocate role. 3. Following implementation of the nursing case manager role, nurses were able to see results of their intervention, nursing accountability was enhanced, and the number of documented positive patient outcomes increased. 4. The two primary paper tools used by nurses in this project were the care plan to direct individualized care and the progress note to report problem resolution.