The development and application of a public health skills assessment tool for use in primary care organisations

The public health skills assessment instrument described in this paper was developed to provide a key group of UK primary care practitioners (health visitors) with a personal development planning tool and researchers with a robust assessment tool for use in evaluations of innovative local public health programmes. Pilot testing with over 120 practitioners has provided evidence of its reliability and validity as a research instrument as well as yielding useful insights for public health educators, practitioners and policy-makers. Factor analysis confirms 10 core competency domains for health visitors which are remarkably consistent with those recently identified for UK public health specialists, interpreted here as grounds for optimism in the greater co-ordination between strategic and front-line approaches to public health work in primary care. However, results also confirm earlier findings indicating low levels of skill amongst health visitors in tackling health inequalities through interventions such as community development, raising questions about their capability to work effectively in new roles proposed by the Department of Health.