4 Discussion
Besides case management for people with chronic diseases, practice nurses within general practices in the Netherlands are increasingly held responsible for organising care for older people. The present study examined into more detail how PNs formulate and adhere to a care plan in delivering proactive care to community-dwelling older people.
Although nurse-led chronic disease management has proven to be feasible, acceptable, and sustainable in general practice [14], proactive care for older people poses additional challenges to PNs. Concerning the formulation of care plans, only 27.8% of the problems identified through CGA were included in a care plan, which is in agreement with our previous work [15]. It implies, as confirmed by the findings, that the formulation of care plans by PNs is not only influenced by the cut-off points of the CGA, but also by a complex interplay of patient-related and problem-specific factors. In decision-making, PNs may outweigh the importance of various factors based on their knowledge of the older person [16] and other key aspects known to influence nursing decision-making, such as expertise and intuition [17]. Moreover, the post-discussion of each CGA with the GP could have influenced the decision to prioritise problems typically identified under a more medical model (e.g., hypertension) at the expense of more client-centred problems. Further research is needed to support this assertion.