The role of the professional organisation in setting standards for nursing

This paper explores a number of ways in which a professional nursing organisation may be involved in setting standards and evaluating practice. Aspects of this role will be discribed using two approaches: the paper starts off by tracing the developments in standard setting in a number of key professional nursing organisations and goes on to describe in detail how one organisation has approached the task. The paper concludes by highlighting a number of factors that need careful consideration by groups who might wish to develop similar projects.