Outcome measures: problems and opportunities for public health nursing.

Increasingly, outcome measures are being used to evaluate the effectiveness of health care. There are particular difficulties in establishing outcome measures for public health nursing, especially those that would demonstrate health gain. These problems arise as a result of the role of public health nursing and the nature of outcome measures. Possible solutions are the use of caseload and community profiles or the aggregation of client-negotiated health objectives. These solutions would also provide small area health information and outcome measures which would be sensitive to health needs in local communities.