Nursing administrators' perceptions of critical care CNSs

The literature has demonstrated inconsistencies among nursing administrators in their perceptions of the CNS role functions. Nursing administrators from 198 hospitals were surveyed: (a) to determine the current use of the critical care CNS, (b) to identify the importance placed on the critical care CNS role functions (expert clinician, educator, consultant/change agent, researcher, manager), (c) to ascertain perceptions of specific activities related to each role function, and (d) to determine any differences in perception of role functions between administrators who employed critical care CNSs and those who did not. Nursing administrators who employed critical care CNSs ranked the role of expert clinician as most important, followed by educator, consultant/change agent, and researcher. The role of manager was ranked least important. Nursing administrators who did not employ critical care CNSs ranked the roles in the following order of importance: expert clinician, educator, consultant/change agent, manager, and researcher.