A study of nurses' perceptions of client mobility

This paper is part of a larger study to examine the concept of mobility from the perspectives of clients and nurses. It represents a beginning effort at clarifying, refining, and developing the concept for nursing practice as the current literature concentrates on immobility. The enquiry began with a theoretical phase during which attributes and characteristics of the concept were elicited. This was followed by a fieldwork phase to determine whether there was congruency between the theoretical formulations of the concept and empirical data. Primary nurses and their clients were interviewed and data were analyzed using content analysis. In this article, only data obtained from the nurse population are reported. Themes derived from the nurses' interviews are described and compared with the results of the theoretical phase. Findings revealed that there was a measure of support for the concept as defined in the theoretical phase but pointed to the need for more empirical work with different client populations across settings.