The content of the nursing consultation at a health center

AIMS: To describe the care process in the Nursing Station. To analyse the length of a consultation and factors which affect the length. DESIGN: Crossover study. Analysis of the length of the Consultation, using a multiple lineal regression model. SITE. Urban Health Centre. PATIENTS AND OTHERS TAKING PART: All the calls and consultations, both in the patient's home and in the Health Centre, undertaken by six nurses over a period of two weeks. MAIN MEASUREMENTS AND RESULTS: There were 879 consultations. 65.41% of them took place in the treatment room. Ten health problems represented 72% of the work-load. Health education took un the greatest proportion of time. The average time of a consultation was of 10.40 +/- 0.3 minutes. The length of the consultation depended on the professional involved, on the place where it took place, on the number of problems which the patient had and on the nature of the main problem: multiple correlation coefficient = 0.74; F = 67.52 (p < 0.00000001). CONCLUSIONS: The nurse faces a very limited number of health problems. Most of her activities are preventive or to do with prevention. The length of the Consultation in greatly conditioned by the amount of morbidity.