Conceptions of the nursing process amongst nurse teachers and clinical nurses

This is a report of an empirical study whose aim was to investigate the conceptual nature of the nursing-process approach to the delivery of nursing care. The report includes a selective review of the literature on the subject to determine how the nursing-process approach is characterized by people who write about it. Details of the grounded theory research methodology used are outlined. So are the hierarchically focused interviews used to collect the data. Details of the data analysis are also given, including the use of a cluster analysis technique. In the results section, areas of concordance between conceptions of the nursing-process approach as they appear in the literature and those held by the interviews have been identified. Areas where conceptions are at variance with those in the literature have also been identified.