SETTING NURSING STANDARDS AND EVALUATING CARE

In order to provide a high quality of nursing care, it is necessary for nurses to develop standards of patient care and appropriate evaluation tools so that all aspects of professional nursing, including the intellectual and interpersonal, will be ensured. The development of philosophies, objectives, and standards is discussed in this article, and an example is given of how one hospital nursing service department developed objectives for patient units and an evaluation tool to measure progress toward these objectives.