Overview of the Quality and Safety Question

Reseach addressing the safety and quality of population-focused nursing practice is sparse, partly due to lack of junding opportunities and partly due to a lack of a cogent research agenda around which programs of research can be developed. Today's climate for decision making in health related services demands strong evidence of the quality and value of public health nurses' continuing contribution. Successful evidence-based public health nursing (PHN) practice depends on high-quality reserch that addresses practice safely and quality. As a first step, with funding from the Agency for Helathcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) a 3-day invitational conference in October 2010 brought experts together from multiple disciplines to consider the quality, safety and costs of population-focused PHN interventions and their relationship to population health outcomes. This presentation will review the consensus conference goals and summarize the working group discussions.