Work environment challenging Irish public health nurses' care quality: First postnatal visit

Objectives: Exploring views and experiences of public health nurses of their work environment and measurement of care practices at first postnatal visits.

Design: An exploratory qualitative design. Data collected using four focus groups and analyzed using thematic analysis.

Sample: Nineteen public health nurses from four health service regions in Ireland participated.

Results: Two themes emerged. Theme one identified "challenges of providing a quality service." Public health nurses identified workload demands and that the working environment can detract from the ability to provide a quality service. Challenges within the home, language barriers, and lack of support from management were key issues. Theme two identified "challenges of measuring quality of public health nursing practice." While Measuring practice through quantitative outcomes such as key performance indicators were viewed as inadequate to measure the quality of care provided, positive views of using quality process indicators to measure the quality of their practice emerged.

Conclusions: Key issues concern the working environment of public health nurses and challenges of providing and measuring care practices. Absence of appropriate supports and resources means public health nurses work hard to provide quality care. Public health nurses were confident they would score high on quality process measurements of their practice.