Monitoring quality of nursing care.

The first phase of a cooperative project to develop and pilot-test an improved system for monitoring the quality of nursing care is described. Evaluation criteria from existing methodologies were grouped in a comprehensive framework of nursing objectives and subobjectives, and both the framework and the criteria developed were tested statistically. The master criteria list was placed in a computer file, from which criteria subsets are systematically selected for actual quality monitoring. The methodology has been used in two pilot hospitals; in the second phase of the project, now under way, the system is being implemented in a wider sample of hospitals to further test the validity of the conceptual framework and the reliability of individual criteria.