The Process Of Health Visiting

This study examines the nature of the professional-client interaction which constitutes the core of health visiting practice. The thesis describes the development of a new method of recording health visitor-client interaction, and of a theoretical framework for health visiting within which health visiting can be described and explained. In an empirical study undertaken in one health district in South East England health visitors tape recorded their home visits to families over a period of one year from the time of the birth of a new baby. The problems and advantages of this method of data collection and the views of the health visitors and their clients about its use are described. The lack of a theory of health visiting within which the data could be interpreted led to a reappraisal of the research in conjunction with the researcher's ongoing clinical practice, and thence to the development of a new conceptual model of health visiting. The model was tested against the data using the strategies developed by Glaser and Strauss for the generation of grounded theory. The. data illustrated the assumptions, goals and modes of health visiting interventions which constituted the model. The model was also used in practice, as illustrated by the presentation of a study of one exemplar family. It is concluded that the professional practice of health visiting cannot be adequately explained by activity analysis or by reliance on an ideological as opposed to a. theoretical framework. The relationship between research, theory and practice in nursing is discussed and the thesis is offered as an example of the integration of the. Three activities within a single project.