Optimising the Nursing Scope of Practice in a Homeless Health Service: A Qualitative Descriptive Study

To explore specialist homeless health professionals' perceptions of gaps in homeless health care and understand whether these might be addressed through existing nursing scopes of practice.

Qualitative descriptive study.

Semi-structured interviews and focus groups with a purposive sample of 22 staff in nursing (11) and non-nursing (11) roles, engaged with a Homeless Health Service. Data were collected via videoconferencing and recordings transcribed verbatim. An exploratory framework guided deductive and inductive thematic analysis.

Service gap themes included the need for integration with mainstream health services, more specialised health professionals, and adaptations to the existing models of care. Addressing these gaps involved enhancements to the broad scope of nursing practice, workforce development by establishing homeless health as a nursing specialty and optimising organisational governance to minimise risk.

The most pressing homeless health service delivery gap was lack of health service integration, and it was unclear how this could be resolved through nursing scopes of practice. Other service gaps could be addressed through skilling nurses to practice preventative health care, as well as crisis management. Enhancing nurses' capability in physical and mental health assessment skills including alcohol and other drugs and procedural skills would support wraparound care for people experiencing homelessness. We conclude that a homeless health nursing specialty could be established that formalises the scope of practice of nurses in this field to ensure future post-graduate training aligns with service gaps.

This study identifies opportunities to optimise nursing scopes of practice to address Homeless Health Service gaps through reviewing models of care and nursing practice. For example, enhancing nurses' capability to provide preventative and wraparound care. This research may inform a development pathway to enhance education and training for nurses working with vulnerable populations.

COREQ 32-item checklist. No patient or public contribution.