Abstract
Nurses' assessment of patients' mobility in hospital provided the focus for an inductive qualitative study which examined how an everyday aspect of nursing practice was carried out. The study described assessment practices in both long-term care and acute care wards for elderly patients as a situated activity. Interviews with nurses, as well as observation of their activities and records, resulted in explanations of their behaviour as deriving from their conceptions of ward functions. These conceptions arose from their adoption of the values of cure and discharge and so, in the different types of ward, assessment held different meanings and was carried out in different ways. The findings have implications for nursing practice in different settings but also for the care of elderly and chronically ill patients, where cure is an inappropriate end goal of care. This example of developing explanatory theory inductively also has implications for the development of mid-range nursing theory and suggestions are made for its extension.
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