Standards of nursing performance. Tools for assuring quality care.

By providing specific, job-related performance requirements, standards of nursing performance can play an important role in assuring the quality of nursing care. Nursing standards, such as those implemented at the Jewish Hospital of Cincinnati, help orient and educate new staff nurses; promote consistent, acceptable nursing care throughout the hospital; enhance communication between nursing staff and nurse managers; and form the basis of equitable, objective performance appraisal--all of which have an impact on the quality of nursing care. In addition, valuable quality assessment data can be gained from performance evaluations based on standards. When combined with informatin from other quality assurance mechanisms, such as patient care evaluation studies and nursing staff surveys, these data can contribute significantly to comprehensive assessment of nursing performance and lead to overall improvement in the quality of nursing care. To be most effective, however, the standards must be flexible so that they can be adapted to particular jobs and levels of training and experience and so that they can be appropriately modified as job requirements change. They will thus remain valuable tools for assuring the quality of nursing care.