The value of the nurse specialists' role: Pandora initial findings.

obtained from a recent survey of nurse activity and productivity (Royal College of Nursing, 2009). A detailed explanation of how nurses input their work using the Pandora database is fully described by Leary et al. (2008) but, in basic terms, there are eight domains that have been generated from earlier verifi cation studies. These eight domains form the initial sections for data input (based upon actual activity, not related to an individual patient episode). The domains can be seen in Figure 1. This means that the nurse would input their activity by defi ning what they had been doing, starting with one of the eight domains, and then inputting into a range of sub-categories that provided greater information, to defi ne the activity in more detail in terms of the date, the context, the level of temporal and emotional effort required for the activity, as well as the outcome. In addition, there was a free text box to record additional narrative, which helped to describe the event in more detail. The narratives were used for qualitative evaluation and added granularity to the overall information obtained. The data generated also enabled the activity described to be modelled using an economic analysis based upon National Health Service (NHS) activity and Health Resource Group (HRG) codes. This economic modelling demonstrated that a whole-time equivalent (WTE) CNS over a one-year period provided: