Background: Over the last decades, converging forces in hospital care, including cost-containment policies, rising
healthcare demands and nursing shortages, have driven the search for new operational models of nursing care
delivery that maximize the use of available nursing resources while ensuring safe, high-quality care. Little is known,
however, about the distinctive features of these emergent nursing care models. This article contributes to filling this
gap by presenting a theoretically and empirically grounded taxonomy of nursing care organization models in the
context of acute care units in Quebec and comparing their distinctive features.
Methods: This study was based on a survey of 22 medical units in 11 acute care facilities in Quebec. Data
collection methods included questionnaire, interviews, focus groups and administrative data census. The analytical
procedures consisted of first generating unit profiles based on qualitative and quantitative data collected at the
unit level, then applying hierarchical cluster analysis to the units’ profile data.
Results: The study identified four models of nursing care organization: two professional models that draw mainly
on registered nurses as professionals to deliver nursing services and reflect stronger support to nurses’ professional
practice, and two functional models that draw more significantly on licensed practical nurses (LPNs) and assistive
staff (orderlies) to deliver nursing services and are characterized by registered nurses’ perceptions that the practice
environment is less supportive of their professional work.
Conclusions: This study showed that medical units in acute care hospitals exhibit diverse staff mixes, patterns of
skill use, work environment design, and support for innovation. The four models reflect not only distinct
approaches to dealing with the numerous constraints in the nursing care environment, but also different degrees
of approximations to an “ideal” nursing professional practice model described by some leaders in the contemporary
nursing literature. While the two professional models appear closer to this ideal, the two functional models are
farther removed.