Examining missed care in community nursing: A cross section survey design

To examine the prevalence of missed care in the community nursing.

Previous studies have used a missed care framework to identify challenges routine nursing care in acute care environments. Several issues related to quality of care, safe staffing, job satisfaction and poor teamwork. However, this concept has not been examined in the community nursing context.

A cross-sectional survey design was used to explore the concept of missed care in community nursing using demographical information, community nursing roles and reasons for missed care.

Online questionnaires were completed by 458 community nurses in the Republic of Ireland to determine the prevalence of and reasons for missed care (31 July-25 September 2015).

With a response rate of 29%, findings were above 70% in several routine care responsibilities. Other findings point to a higher level of missed care in nurses who had less than five years' experience and other variables such as age, those who worked additional unpaid hours and there were some regional variations.

The results of the study indicate a high prevalence of missed care in the community nurses surveyed and that preventative care was the type of care most likely to be missed. This has serious implications for a nursing service that is preventative in nature and suggests that the missed care framework could benefit workforce planning for community nursing services both in Ireland and elsewhere. Accordingly, policy, practice and educational reforms are fundamental to meet current and future population needs.