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At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1991

Needs assessment needs assessment....

Needs assessment is now a high priority, but it is conceptually muddled and technically difficult. In the past a variety of academic disciplines addressing different aspects of health care have produced a range of definitions on 'need' applicable to their own setting. In the context of the National Health Service Review, 'need' may best be defined as the ability to benefit from 'health care', which depends both on morbidity and on the effectiveness of care. An analysis of its relationship with 'demand', which is the health care that people ask for, and 'supply', which is provided, exposes the limitations of current information sources, and confirms that the formal assessment of needs will inevitably be a lengthy task. Despite these difficulties there is much that can and should be done incrementally to influence contracts between providers and purchasers towards meeting health care needs.

Data Collection↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Patient-centered needs assessment: rationale for a psychometric measure for assessing needs in heart failure.

Determining an individual's unique perspective of an illness experience remains a challenge for clinicians, administrators, and researchers. A range of concepts and psychometric measures have been developed and evaluated to capture this information. These include patient satisfaction, quality of life, and utility measures. Needs assessment as a tool for evaluating perceptions of health status and determining patient satisfaction and treatment plans has been explored in oncology. Studies have demonstrated that a high proportion of patients have unmet needs in relation to activities of daily living, information sources, and comfort. Heart failure (HF), a condition with significant individual and societal burden, mirrors the illness of experience of cancer, as individuals process issues related to prognosis, treatment regimens, and decreased functional status. A needs-based assessment of health status, expectations, and perceptions is patient-centered and has the capacity to not only evaluate current health status but also plan and project care plans. Needs assessment is a dynamic construct rather than a point in time consistent with other assessment modalities, such as quality of life. Multidimensional needs assessment allows for planning and projection of needs, not only on an individual but also a population basis. Implicit in the exploration of needs is an expectation of level of care to be provided, from both the provider and recipient of care. In many instances a misalignment may exist between services and resources available to the individual. This article seeks to provide a theoretical justification for the development of a needs assessment instrument for patients with HF and to discuss the rationale of this method of assessment to create better alignment and resources with patients needs and expectations.

Colonic Neoplasms↗
PubMed1984

Assessing the need for a needs assessment.

Needs assessments are conducted with the expectation that the information obtained will be used to make rational decisions. However, appropriate planning and service delivery decisions do not always flow from needs assessment information. Assessment of the anticipated utilization of needs assessment data, and evaluation of the appropriateness of these uses prior to conducting a needs assessment may prevent inefficient use of resources. The present study evaluated the willingness and ability of community mental health leaders to use needs assessment data. A structured interview was developed which tapped into several dimensions relevant to the evaluation of the need for a needs assessment. The most striking result was that when asked how they would use future needs assessment data, all respondents indicated that the results would not influence service delivery patterns. Strategies to facilitate the constructive use of information gained from needs assessments are discussed.

Attitude of Health Personnel↗
PubMed1988

Comprehensive behavioral medicine in community mental health. A needs assessment that needs assessment.

It is suggested that the massive costs incurred nationally in health care are in large part a fitting concern of Community Mental Health (CMH). There is considerable data available to suggest that as much as half of the variance in common health disorders is associated with behavioral factors. There is a rapidly growing movement to provide interventions geared toward these behavioral components in health disorders, but much of this has occurred outside of the traditional mental health environment. There are arguments to suggest that CMH should be more involved in the development of comprehensive behavioral medicine services, both in terms of the expertise and resources that it can bring to bear upon these problems, and its potential to reach segments of the population which are otherwise likely to be underserved, if served at all. Implications for CMH planning and financing are discussed, drawing upon a selective literature review and clinical illustrations.

Behavioral Medicine↗
PubMed2002

Learning needs assessment: assessing the need.

Learning needs assessment is a crucial stage in the educational process that leads to changes in practice, and has become part of government policy for continuing professional development. Learning needs assessment can be undertaken for many reasons, so its purpose should be defined and should determine the method used and the use made of findings. Exclusive reliance on formal needs assessment could render education an instrumental and narrow process rather than a creative, professional one. Different learning methods tend to suit different doctors and different identified learning needs. Doctors already use a wide range of formal and informal ways of identifying their own learning needs as part of their ordinary practice. These should be the starting point in designing formalised educational systems for professional improvement.

Education, Medical, Continuing↗
PubMed1998

A community needs assessment: the care needs assessment pack for dementia (CarenapD)--its development, reliability and validity.

OBJECTIVE: To develop and evaluate a multidisciplinary needs assessment tool for people with dementia living in the community and their carers. DESIGN: The measure was developed through applying a theory of need, generating content, consultation with potential users and refinement and evaluation. Validity was established incrementally through the development process. SETTING: The development and evaluation was conducted in a variety of settings, including multidisciplinary dementia community care teams, social work departments, day hospitals, and inpatient and residential care. PATIENTS: The evaluation included community patients with a formal diagnosis of dementia (N = 34) and consultation with a multidisciplinary group of potential users (N = 23). The development process included inpatients with a formal diagnosis of dementia (N = 157) and consultation with potential users (N = 170) from a range of professions including both health and social care. MEASURES: Interrater reliability was assessed using the kappa statistic. Social validity was estimated using a measure developed for this purpose as part of the development process. RESULTS: The evaluation of interrater reliability demonstrated that three-quarters of assessors agreed on at least 85% of items in the CarenapD. The kappa statistic demonstrated that agreement for 76.2% of items in the CarenapD was 'good' or better (ie kappa >0.75), for 12.4% of items it was 'fair' or 'moderate' (ie kappa 0.35-0.60) and for the remaining 12 (11.4%) items for which kappa could not be calculated there was low intra-item variance and high agreement (>90%). There was good evidence for social validity. CONCLUSIONS: The CarenapD is a reliable and valid multidisciplinary assessment of need for people with dementia living in the community and their carers.

Aged↗
PubMed2002

Health needs assessment and needs-led health service change: a survey of projects involving public health doctors.

OBJECTIVES: To describe the criteria that define an effective health needs assessment and to explore which factors are important for the delivery of effective health needs assessment in the English National Health Service (NHS). METHODS: A postal questionnaire to all public health doctors in an English health region to describe health needs assessment activity, including initiating factors, methods and outcomes. This was followed by semi-structured interviews with public health professionals and others involved in 10 purposively selected needs assessments. RESULTS: A response rate of 62% identified a total of 102 health needs assessments undertaken between 1993 and 1998. A number of themes emerged as being important in the impact of health needs assessments on policy and planning. These included careful design, methodological rigour, decisive leadership, good communication, involvement and ownership of the work from relevant stakeholders, support from senior decision-makers, appreciation of the political dynamics and engagement with local priorities, availability of resources and, finally, an element of chance. These themes can be categorised broadly into contextual factors and quality or robustness of the work. Our findings suggest that, although methodological and analytical quality are necessary characteristics of effective health needs assessment, they are not sufficient without a favourable political environment. CONCLUSION: There appear to be conditions under which needs assessment is more likely to be effective in terms of its influence on policy and planning. However, it is clear that needs assessment does not occupy a central position in health service decision-making, remaining vulnerable to a range of factors over which those responsible for its conduct have little or no control.

Attitude of Health Personnel↗
PubMed2006

The "carers' needs assessment for Schizophrenia": an instrument to assess the needs of relatives caring for schizophrenia patients.

OBJECTIVE: For the purpose of service planning, an instrument was developed for the systematic assessment of interventions needed by the caregivers of schizophrenia patients. METHOD: The development of this instrument was based on in-depth interviews and focus groups. It consists of 18 areas describing common problems of schizophrenia caregivers. For each of these problem areas several possible interventions are offered. Concurrent validity, inter-rater and retest reliability were tested among 50 caregivers. RESULTS: The kappa values for the inter-rater reliability are predominantly excellent (kappa > 0.75). The values for the retest reliability show a wide range between excellent (kappa > 0.75) and fair agreement (kappa 0.40-0.60). The significant correlations found between summary scores of this new instrument and several sub-scales of the Family Problem Questionnaire support the assumption that the concurrent validity is satisfactory. CONCLUSION: These results suggest that this instrument is both valid and reliable.

Caregivers↗
PubMed1985

Assessing needs for youth health promotion.

Children and adolescents recently have become a group targeted for health promotion efforts. It is argued that early behavioral intervention will alter patterns of behavior that might place young people at increased risk for chronic diseases later in life. The Minnesota Heart Health Program is a longitudinal, community-based research and demonstration project to improve cardiovascular health in three north central communities. Reductions in cigarette smoking, improved eating and exercise patterns, and hypertension management are targeted objectives. To design educational interventions for children and adolescents in these areas as part of this program, a behavioral needs assessment was conducted in the communities prior to program implementation. This needs assessment focused on existing behavior patterns, skills related to the targeted behaviors, and environmental influences. This article describes that needs assessment, the results from two of the communities, differences due to gender and age of student, and the implications of the results for designing intervention activities for children and adolescents.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1982

A needs assessment strategy for an era of limited resources.

Among the several methods of assessing need for health services, the social indicator and the rates under treatment approaches utilize routinely available data. A well designed community survey, considered by many as the criterion of need within an area, is costly, difficult to mount, and requires considerable expertise. Therefore, it would seem reasonable to attempt to limit the need to utilize this approach. Presented here is a schema which utilizes the social indicator and rates under treatment approaches for an entire catchment area, reserving the survey approach only for those areas in which the two readily available need assessments are at variance, suggesting questionable validity for one or both approaches. Within a suburban middle-class county containing pockets of small town poverty, a social area analysis was undertaken to characterize need for mental health services. Inpatient rates under treatment were developed to measure demand. Key informant and survey approaches were undertaken to study selectively those census tracts which were discordant as to need and demand. This resulted in reducing the size of the population to be surveyed to 25 per cent of the total county, thus more efficiently using the limited resources available for needs assessment purposes.

Cross-Sectional Studies↗
PubMed1997

Needs assessment at a practice level; using routine data in a meaningful way.

BACKGROUND: General practitioners and primary health care teams are asked to take an increasing role in assessing needs and priorities for the people they serve. We describe a model, using routinely available data, to provide health and social information to all general practices in an English Health Authority (South & West Devon, population 586,000, containing 103 general practices) to inform practice-based needs assessment. METHOD: Practice-coded hospital activity information was used where available, otherwise the FHSA population register was used to assign spatially referenced data (OPCS birth files, OPCS mortality files, cancer registration files and census information) to practices. Additionally, indicative incidences and prevalences were calculated for each practice using age- and sex-specific rates derived from national surveys (Survey of Morbidity Statistics from General Practice and the OPCS Health Survey for England). RESULTS: Information was produced for each practice on births, lifestyle, social factors, incidence and prevalence, hospital activity and mortality. Patient numbers rather than rates were presented. General practitioners commented that this approach gave an understanding of the size of health and social problems and fitted with the concept of numbers needed to treat. CONCLUSION: Public health involvement in practice-based needs assessment is essential. Current public health input has mainly been on a selective individual practice basis and is very resource intensive. This approach allows all practices to have immediate access to a wide range of health and social information presented in a way that is easily understood and informs debate on health needs within the practice.

Adult↗
PubMed1989

Linking level of care to level of need. Assessing the need for mental health care for nursing home residents.

What are the mental health status and active treatment needs of nursing home residents? A stratified random sample of 828 residents in 25 facilities serving Medicaid recipients was assessed for levels of physical and psychosocial functioning. Although 91.2% had sufficiently high levels of medical and physical care needs to justify nursing home placement, 79.6% also had moderate to intense needs for mental health care. Older residents, relative to their younger counterparts, had more intense medical and mental health care needs. It was also found that psychiatric diagnosis was a poor indicator of mental health service needs, particularly among elderly individuals.

Adult↗
PubMed1982

Assessing needs for community hospital continuing medical education.

Between July 1, 1979, and June 30, 1980, 765 programs eligible for Category 1 credit were offered in 35 community hospitals. Data were collected to determine how the need was identified, who was responsible for conducting the needs assessment, and what influenced the choice of method. Data were collected by two methods: reviewing records for each course and interviewing each course director. Courses were planned using analysis of hard data (16 per cent) and an impressionistic method (84 per cent). The course director conducted the needs assessment and chose topics for 47 per cent; learners determined needs for 19 per cent. Possibly, CME programs should be viewed as offering systematic assistance in identifying personal needs and stimulating a physician to learn more by providing an opportunity to compare one's current practice with a desired or standard level. If discrepancies are identified, the physician must decide why they exist and assign levels of priority on resolution.

Education, Medical, Continuing↗
PubMed1995

Population laboratories and health needs assessment.

In the 1960s Walter Holland established a series of epidemiological studies in a defined geographical population in southeast London. This endeavour was an example of the ambition held by generations of epidemiologists to study human populations under actual conditions of community life. Early examples of American population laboratories were mainly concerned with studies of aetiology whereas p.c. (post-Cochrane) studies have aimed to identify both aetiological factors and to assess need for effective and efficient health services. The case is made for the value of a population laboratory in facilitating mortality follow-up studies, undertaking health care needs assessments and evaluating new technologies.

Epidemiologic Methods↗
PubMed2000

The Southampton Needs Assessment Questionnaire (SNAQ): a valid tool for assessing the rehabilitation needs of disabled people.

OBJECTIVE: To validate the Southampton Needs Assessment Questionnaire (SNAQ) for use with disabled people during face-to-face interviews. DESIGN: The SNAQ was designed to be used in a cross-sectional survey of disabled people with a physical disability with a follow-up study one year later. Content and criterion validity was examined using 32 disabled people who took part in the pilot study. Construct validity and internal reliability was examined using data from 93 disabled people who took part in the main survey. Responsiveness of the questionnaire was evaluated using the data gathered during a follow-up study of 77 people had taken part in the original study. OUTCOME MEASURES: The OPCS Disability Severity Scales (OPCS) and the Functional Independence Measure (FIM) were used to measure level of disability of participants, the Nottingham Health Profile (NHP) and the UK version of the SF-36 to examine perceived health status. PARTICIPANTS: People with a primary physical disability, aged 16-65, randomly selected from two disability registers in southern England. MAIN RESULTS: Content and criterion validity were established. Construct validity and internal reliability of the SNAQ was good. Inter-rater reliability was not tested since only one researcher conducted the interviews. Test-retest reliability was not formally tested because of the probability that participants would learn from the first needs assessment questionnaire and that different results on a retest occasion could arise from this. The SNAQ was sensitive in picking up changes over time. CONCLUSION: The SNAQ has shown good validity (content, coverage and construct), internal reliability, sensitivity and responsiveness. Further studies are needed to define the consequences of meeting or not meeting the rehabilitation needs of disabled people. Inter-rater reliability remains to be established.

Adolescent↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Needs assessment surveys in gerontological nursing: are we really assessing continuing education needs and priorities?

The growing elderly population with diverse and complex health care needs requires increased attention to educational preparation for nurses who provide their care. This article describes a needs assessment effort that reinforces the importance of using a variety of strategies to collect data to facilitate planning relevant educational offerings. Results of the study indicated a wide variety of learning needs and diverse opinions regarding priorities. In addition, all participants in the study indicated perceptions of greater educational need for other RNs in gerontological practice than for themselves. The extent of the perception of need for educational offerings in gerontology and the lack of consensus about priorities indicate a need for further research. Several issues surrounding survey methods for collecting needs assessment data are discussed.

Education, Nursing, Continuing↗