COMPLEX HEALTH INTERVENTIONS - Dimensions & Challenges in Nursing

Virtual Webinar

In Nursing Sciences, an intervention is defined as an activity or action framed within the goals and values of nursing and undertaken by healthcare providers with the purpose of enhancing the wellbeing and quality of care of people with health-related needs. Such actions might even be undertaken by patients themselves as in self-care activities (Naylor, 2003; Richards & Rahm Hallberg, 2015). Within the wider sphere of intervention research, the complexity of health interventions has gained special attention during recent years. Scholars argue that simplicity might be a chimera when interventions relate to the promotion, support or change of health behaviours (Richards & Rahm Hallberg, 2015). If defining 'intervention' is quite consensual and straightforward, identifying the complexity elements of an intervention is in itself a challenge.

The Medical Research Council framework anticipates four stages in intervention research and elicits such complex issues throughout the intervention research lifecycle. The variability in potential complexity issues makes the process of defining 'complex' difficult and reinforces the need to have comprehensive methodological guidance from early development to long-term implementation. Such guidance is crucial to address key uncertainties, thereby ensuring that sufficient effort has been made to develop and pilot the intervention before departing to a full trial, and to ease the process of implementation into clinical daily practice (Richards & Rahm Hallberg, 2015).

Thus, the second edition of the Phi Xi Talks aims to support nurses to identify key guidelines for intervention development, understand the complexity dimensions in the intervention lifecycle and discuss lessons learned during the development, implementation and assessment of complex nursing interventions in clinical practice. This webinar is hosted by the Phi Xi Chapter of Sigma Theta Tau's International - STTI, with the support of the Nursing School of Coimbra - ESEnfC and the Health Sciences Research Unit: Nursing - UICISA:E.