Building capacity for health promotion by addressing nurses' role confusion: Study protocol of a pilot clustered randomised controlled trial

Abstract

Aim: To describe the protocol for the pilot phase of a complex intervention, designed to address primary care nurses' role confusion in health promotion. Design: A pilot clustered randomized controlled trial, with control and intervention groups. Methods: The study will be conducted in a primary care setting. Participants will be nurses from the primary care health service working in a primary care team (PCT, 15 control group; 15 intervention group). Nurses in the experimental group will receive the ROLE-AP programme over a 3-week period. The control group will continue with the normal routine. The pilot will help determine the intervention's feasibility, acceptability, fidelity and quality of the programme components. Data collected preintervention, postintervention and 3 months after intervention will provide estimates of the intervention's preliminary effects on the main variable, nurses' degree of agreement concerning their expected role in health promotion. The study received funding from the local government in December 2019. Discussion: Role confusion is promoting primary care nurses' omissions in their health-promoting practice, which is far from the ideal portrayed by the Ottawa Charter. Interventions are needed that reveal the most appropriate mechanisms for addressing role confusion, which requires reaching an intraprofessional agreement about the expectations for role activities. Healthcare organisations could benefit from the incorporation of a programme of these characteristics into standard practice. Impact: This study will produce a novel and comprehensive complex intervention that is expected to build nurses' capacity in primary healthcare organizations for health promotion, which is key to increasing the quality, efficiency and sustainability of the National Health System. The programme evaluation and feasibility study will reveal how to better use existing resources in a full-scale clinical trial. Trial registration: ClinicalTrials.gov (ID: NCT04726696).