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Evaluating the implementation of care models such as Primary Nursing requires assessment of both short-term and long-term outcomes. In a hospital in Piemonte, Italy, a mixedmethod time-series study was conducted to assess if and how the organizational culture of nurses changed in relation to the implementation of a new organizational model of care. Instruments used included the Condition of Work Effectiveness Questionnaire (CWEQ II) and an investigator-developed questionnaire to evaluate perceptions of dimensions consistent with Primary Nursing. Results showed a significant culture change over time related to the implementation of Primary Nursing, mainly in terms of nurses' understanding of their professional role specifications. In addition, the results supported a relationship between being involved in the project implementation and the procedural and cultural approach adopted.

Primary nursing is a model of care delivery that has been shown to improve the quality of care provided to patients and enhance the nurse-patient relationship. Although there is considerable attention in the literature on Primary Nursing concerning inpatient hospital units, there has been no discussion of Primary Nursing in short-stay units. Our hospital aimed to introduce Primary Nursing into all the units including short-stay. Staff were educated about the role of the primary nurse using Koloroutis's (2004) Relationship-Based Care model, comprising three crucial relationships: care provider's relationship with patients and families, with self, and with colleagues. The primary nurse develops the plan of care for individual patients based on their therapeutic relationship, which is sustained for the patient's length of stay in the unit.

Since its development in the 1960s, primary nursing has become the model of care delivery in many health care settings. Over time, myths have developed about primary nursing's relevance in environments with high acuity, varying skill mixes, diverse staffing patterns, and short lengths of stay. This article addresses those myths.

The author presents a labor process analysis of recent changes in nursing work on hospital wards. In the immediate post-World War II decades, hospital nursing was organized to include stratified nurses--registered and auxiliary nurses (licensed practical nurses and nurses' aides)--in a common labor process called "team nursing." Team nursing adapted Taylorist principles to sharply demarcate tasks between registered nurses (RNs) and auxiliaries. In the 1970s and 1980s, team nursing increasingly replaced by "primary nursing" with a majority of RNs. Auxiliaries were displaced as RNs assumed undivided responsibility for complete nursing care. The transition to primary nursing is partly explained through the convergence of managerial interests with the professionalizing interests of nursing's elite. However, primary nursing was not simply imposed from the top down. Team nursing produced divisiveness between RNs and auxiliaries at the same time that it forced these workers to violate the official differentiation of tasks and held RNs responsible for work performed by auxiliaries. Primary nursing eliminates the problems of team nursing as RNs perform reunified tasks in an unmediated RN-patient relationship. However, primary nursing has produced a new set of contradictions, including an intensified labor process.