« Previous | Contents | Next »
Listen
Evaluating Family Health Nursing Through Education and Practice
GLOSSARY OF TERMS, ABBREVIATIONS AND ACRONYMS
APL: Accreditation of Prior Learning (certificated learning). See credit exemption.
APEL: Accreditation of Prior Experiential Learning. See credit exemption.
ASLIB: Electronic data-base of UK theses.
ASSIA: Applied Social Sciences Index and Abstracts.
Auxiliary nurse: a health worker who is not a registered nurse but who assists in the care of those on the district nursing caseload.
Caseload: a list of people receiving professional intervention for health or illness related matters. The list usually includes summary details of why they are being seen and how frequently. This report is mostly concerned with family health nursing and district nursing caseloads, but has also considered health visiting caseloads. For further information on the difficulties of the concept please see Annex 3.
CINAHL: Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health.
Clinical practice assessment: Assessment of the student's ability to achieve specific learning outcomes related to the practice of nursing. Involves a range of evidence about knowledge, skills, attitudes and understanding.
Community nursing: a broad term denoting varied nursing activities that can take place in settings that range from small community hospitals/doctor's surgeries to work in people's homes. The term can include work done by District Nurses, Health Visitors, Practice Nurses, Midwives and a range of other (often specialist) nurses.
Community specialist practice qualification: a qualification that denotes ability to work at a higher level of practice within the community than a registered nurse. In the UK eight such qualifications are recognised and these include district nursing and health visiting.
Community Staff Nurse (SN): a registered nurse who does not have a specific specialist qualification to work in the community but whose work involves caring for those on the district nursing caseload.
Community Profile: a written appraisal and analysis of the FHN's geographical practice area (including community health issues).
Community Psychiatric Nurse (CPN): a registered nurse who has a specific specialist qualification to carry out mental health nursing work in the community.
Core (e.g. core module): applicable to all areas of community nursing practice.
Core Primary Health Care Team (core PHCT): a group of health care professionals whose everyday work is focused mainly or exclusively on the provision of primary care services for the population of the FHN site. The core PHCT usually comprises all the nurses involved in the care of the DN caseload(s), all Practice Nurses and GPs from all the practices within the FHN site. It may include the Health Visitor and Midwife(s), but this tends to depend on whether they are based within the FHN site or not.
Credit exemption: as part of APL or APEL, a mechanism whereby a student is given exemption from undertaking particular course components (e.g. module(s)) if he/she shows satisfactory evidence of relevant, current and sufficient prior learning.
Distance learning: flexible mode of learning that requires minimal attendance at an educational institution. Learning materials are usually made available to students in paper or web based formats and assessments are completed at the student's own pace.
District Nurse (DN): a registered nurse who has a specific specialist qualification to carry out home visiting nursing work. Traditionally this work has involved caring for those suffering from illness or disability.
Double duty nurse: a nurse whose job combines 2 distinct professional roles. In remote and rural Scotland traditional combinations are District Nurse and Midwife; Community Staff Nurse and Midwife; or District Nurse and Health Visitor.
Ecomap: a diagram of a family's contact with others outside the immediate family. It is intended to give an overview of the family's social interactions and involvements.
Family: a group of individuals with relational connections that may be emotional and/or biological and/or legal in nature. WHO Europe's HEALTH 21 framework equates families with households, but a broader view can also be taken involving family self-definition (i.e. the family is what individual members say it is).
Family Health Nurse (FHN): a "new type of nurse" proposed by WHO Europe in 1998. Their envisaged role is community based and multifaceted. It includes helping individuals, families and communities to cope with illness and to improve their health. The full WHO Europe role definition is given at the start of Chapter 1 of this report.
Family Health Nurse site (FHN site): a distinct geographic area whose population are served by one (or occasionally two) district nursing team(s) within which an FHN is working. Other health professionals whose work involves the provision of primary care services to the population of this site are known as the Primary Health Care Team. Following the educational course, some of the FHNs were allocated a specific "patch" within the overall site and they practised family health nursing only within their given patch. By contrast some other FHNs were responsible for delivering a family health nursing service to a whole site.
General Practitioner (GP): an independent contractor who personally provides primary care medical services to a local population. Some GPs still describe themselves as family practice doctors but this title has declined in usage over the past two decades.
Generalist: pertaining to knowledge and/or practice that is not distinctive in its boundaries and requires broad understandings across a range of subject areas.
Genogram: a diagram of the family constellation which depicts the relationships among family members for several generations. Their structure resembles conventional genealogical family tree diagrams and they often include the mapping of health status/issues.
Health Visitor (HV): a registered nurse who has a specific specialist qualification and additional registration to carry out health promotion and monitoring work within communities. In the past two decades this work has predominantly involved contact with mothers and children (e.g. developmental screening) but recently the public health aspects of the role have been highlighted for priority.
IBSS: International Bibliography of the Social Sciences.
MEDLINE: International Journal data-base of published medical and health science research.
Midwife: a health professional who has a specific qualification and registration to care for women through pregnancy, childbirth and a short period thereafter.
Module: a self-defined part of a degree programme which has its own assessment processes. Sometimes the term "Unit" is also used in the same sense.
NBS: National Board for Nursing, Midwifery and Health Visiting now incorporated into NES NHS Education Scotland.
NMC: Nursing and Midwifery Council. The new regulatory body for Nursing, Midwifery and Health Visiting which recently replaced the UKCC
Nurse practitioner: a nurse who acts as first point of contact to provide health care advice and treatment to select client groups. This usually involves strong elements of autonomous and advanced practice
Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE): a method of measuring clinical competence that usually involves observation of students' skills when dealing with a variety of standardised clinical problems within a controlled environment.
Placement: a community-based setting to which the student is allocated in order to learn from practical work experience.
Portfolio: a collection of evidence that aims to demonstrate prior learning related to a particular course (or course element).
Practice Nurse: a registered nurse who is employed by a GP practice to provide a range of services within the GP surgery. These vary in nature and scope but usually involve screening programmes and chronic disease management. The Practice Nurse may have a specific specialist qualification, but this requirement is not mandatory.
Primary Health Care Team (PHCT): a group of health care professionals whose work as individuals involves some provision of primary care services for the population of the FHN site. For some (the core PHCT, typically DNs, GPs, Practice Nurses) their everyday work is focused mainly or exclusively on the FHN site. For others (typically HVs, Midwives, Community Occupational Therapists, Community Physiotherapists, CPNs) their work also involves substantial provision of services to other populations.
Primary prevention work: health care input whose main purpose is to prevent the occurrence of disease (e.g. teaching young children about healthy eating).
SCOTCAT: an acronym for Scottish credit and accumulation transfer and refers to the academic levels of learning that students have undertaken. To obtain a Bachelors degree from a Scottish University the student would normally accumulate credit at different academic levels. The levels generally equate with the year of the course: thus Level 4 would normally be the academic work undertaken in the fourth year of a classified degree programme. In the Scottish education system there are two types of Bachelors degree. The unclassified degree which finishes at Level 3 and the classified degree which finishes at Level 4. The term SCOTCAT can also be referred to as Scottish Degree Level.
Scottish Executive Social Research (SESR)
Scottish Executive Health Department (SEHD)
Secondary prevention work: health care input whose main purpose is to reduce the prevalence of disease and shorten the course of illness (e.g. screening those thought to be at risk of disease; vaccination programmes).
Specialist: pertaining to knowledge and/or practice that is distinctive in its boundaries and requires in-depth study and understanding. Often requires educational input at advanced level.
Stakeholder: a term generally used to denote a person who has an interest, share or investment in something. In this study the "professional stakeholders" at each site comprised all health care staff in the core Primary Health Care Team and all other relevant health, community and social care staff involved closely with the PHCT. "Lay stakeholders" were defined in the much more general sense of any member of the public living within the FHN site and registered on one of the relevant electoral rolls.
Supervisor: in this context a registered nurse with a community specialist practice qualification whose role is to support and educate the student in the placement setting.
Supervisory visit (also sometimes known as "social visit"): a rather ill-defined term used differently by different District Nurses, but usually referring to a general health checking visit. Often these are for the elderly and particularly those living alone. At some sites these are formally scheduled to take place every 3/6 and 12 months, at others they are done as and when required.
Support visit: again a rather ill-defined term used differently by different District Nurses, but usually referring to a more specific, targeted visit where, for example, blood pressure would be monitored.
Team Leader: a term used to describe a health professional who has a leadership role. In community nursing in remote and rural Scotland this can involve "leading" one other colleague or a large number of people. As such it has limited value.
Tertiary prevention work: health care input whose main purpose is to minimise the effects of the disease for the individual and others, and to promote rehabilitation and adaptation (e.g. education work with a person with newly diagnosed diabetes).
Triage: a term used to describe a systematic process of assessing care needs, deciding on their relative priority and planning immediate interventions (usually in the context of competing demands)
Triple duty nurse: a nurse whose job combines 3 distinct professional roles. In remote and rural Scotland the traditional combination is District Nurse, Midwife and Health Visitor.
UKCC: until recently the regulatory body within the UK for nursing, midwifery and health visiting practice. It is now called the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC).
Web CT: an internet resource devised by the educational provider to facilitate flexible on-line learning. Students can access a range of educational materials and participate in on-line discussions.
ZETOC: Electronic Table of Contents from the British Library.
« Previous | Contents | Next »