Management strategies and patient needs: the provision of nursing care in the community

Community nurse managers in 17 health districts in England were interviewed about their strategies for identifying and coping with unmet need for nursing care in the community, and their efforts to plan community nursing services and to meet changing levels of demand for care The managers were found to have access to a wide range of information for planning services, but this information did not always seem to be used most effectively The managers’ efforts to identify unmet need were often piecemeal and unco‐ordinated, and this may have been, in part, because managers were facing difficulties in meeting existing demands for services As a result, several were beginning to set priorities for care Faced by increasing demand and limited finance, it seems likely that managers will continue to do so, and will develop more stringent criteria for nursing care