Measuring the workload of community mental health nurses: A review of the literature

The movement away from centralised awards along with the intensification Of nursing work has provided an impetus for the Australian Nursing Federation to seek the inclusion of workload measurement tools into Enterprise Bargaining Agreements. This paper reports a review of literature undertaken to identify issues relating to workload measures developed for community mental health settings. The issues addressed include: a review of approaches to measuring workload; an evaluation of how applicable these approaches are to community mental health settings; a review of issues that need to be considered in applying a workload measurement tool to community mental health; and the identification of existing workload models for this setting. The paper concludes that activity based models which measure the work undertaken retrospectively are most appropriate for community mental health as they capture the less tangible aspects of community mental health nursing practice.