Expert and novice public health nurses problem solving abilities: Ensuring healthy communities

Skill in defining problems, a component of analytic assessment, is a core competency of public health nursing practice (Quad Council, 2003). In his seminal work, Reitman (1965) described a continuum of types of problems: well-defined to ill-structured. In Reitman's schema, well-defined problems have identified variables, one solution, and rules that guide the development of a solution. In contrast, ill-structured problems have numerous undefined variables, divergent solutions, and few rules. The thesis of this presentation is that most problems in community/public health nursing practice fall on the ill-structured end of the continuum. Sarsfield, (2009) has described the differences between problem solving strategies used by expert and novice public health nurses in solving ill-structured problems found in public health practice. Namely, experts have extensive, highly consistent patterns that facilitated their solving of ill-structured problems, while novices used inconsistent, random problem solving methods to solve the same problems. This research suggests that teachers of community/public health nursing should help students identify the differences between well defined and ill-structured problems and teach them strategies specific to solving ill-structured problems. In the practice setting, employers should provide more guidance in solving ill-structured problems as novice nurses enter the complex world of community/public health nursing.