The cost of everything and the value of nothing: nursing case histories.

A series of three nursing case histories related to epilepsy care are presented to demonstrate the range of clinical nursing activity in an epilepsy clinic and to pose the question whether any of these activities, deemed essential by both clinician and nurse, would be thought appropriate if cost effectiveness of nursing care was merely measured by a significant reduction in seizure frequency. The conclusion drawn is that a specialist epilepsy nurse in an epilepsy clinic is an invaluable member of the team, who frees the medical member of the team to concentrate on those duties which need medical input: but, using currently applied outcome criteria, it would be difficult to justify the nurse's cost effectiveness. Measures that do this accurately and fairly must be developed.