ABSTRACT

Nursing interventions are actions that nurses perform with or on behalf of individuals, families, and communities to promote health, support maintenance of function, manage illness, and provide comfort at end of life. Interventions must be carefully designed and implemented to achieve these goals. Interventions should be systematically evaluated prior to use in day-to-day practice. This chapter outlines fundamental issues in intervention research: (a) definition of the term “interventions”; (b) key elements of intervention theory; (c) importance of theory in the design and implementation of interventions and assessment of the effects of interventions on outcomes; and (d) readiness of interventions for translation to practice.