Grant: Travel Awards - Institute Community Support

Issue: Within Canada, there are over 360,000 nurses that play important roles in all areas of healthcare. Evaluating the role that nurses play within healthcare teams is important for providing accountability for nursing practice and performance. In the acute care setting, nursing roles have been measured based on adverse events and patient safety as performance indicators. However, these outcomes are not applicable to the primary care setting. The Nursing Role Effectiveness Model (NREM) was developed as a framework to guide the evaluation of nursing practice in multiple healthcare settings, however, little is known about its use in primary healthcare research. Therefore, a scoping review was conducted to explore the use and effectiveness of the NREM in evaluating nursing contributions across multiple sectors. Methods: Joanna Briggs Institute scoping review methodology was utilized. Results: The search yielded 20 articles included for review. The NREM has a strong theoretical foundation for guiding research within multiple sectors. The majority of studies that used the model were conducted in acute care (n=12). Fewer were conducted within community settings, such as long-term care (n=1), home-care (n=1) and primary care (n=1). Relationships proposed within the model have mainly been validated in the acute care setting. Instead, many studies utilized the NREM as a framework to guide the development of expected relationships between variables. Conclusions: The NREM has been successfully used and validated within the acute care setting. There has been very few studies that have applied this model to the community setting, particularly primary care. Given the success of the NREM within other healthcare settings, it is likely that this model will be useful in the development of studies assessing similar relationships in primary care. Future studies need to modify and validate this model for it be accurately used to evaluate nursing within primary care.