What Are the Characteristics of the Parish Nursing Research Literature and How Can it Inform Parish Nurse Practice and Research in Canada? A Scoping Review.
Elsie Millerd, Andrea Fisher, Jeanne M Lambert and 1 others
PMID 34935502WHAT IT FOUND
Parish nursing research is mostly from the United States and has variable quality.
It maps nurse roles, health promotion, and program evaluations, but does not show that parish nursing improves patient outcomes.
Key findings
01The review included 43 studies, and 41 of them (95.3%) were conducted and published in the United States, with one from Canada and one from the United Kingdom.
02The evidence base varied widely in quality: 22 quantitative studies, 14 qualitative studies, seven mixed methods studies, and three randomized controlled trials with weak reporting.
03The literature focused on practice roles, role implementation, and program evaluation, with 32 studies reporting practice roles, 13 describing health promotion, and nine reporting program outcomes.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for RNs
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What it does not show
Most included studies were from the United States, so the review says little about Canadian parish nursing practice. The included studies varied widely in quality, and randomized trial reporting was weak. The review mapped the literature rather than testing whether parish nursing improves patient outcomes. Only English-language material from the searched databases was included, so relevant work may have been missed. Some articles were excluded because their purpose or data collection could not be linked clearly to a research question. Quality appraisal involved reviewer judgment, so scoring could be subjective.
Declared interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest and received no financial support for the work.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read this as evidence that parish nursing improves patient outcomes. It is a scoping review of the research literature, and the included trials had weak reporting and variable quality.