Our findings revealed sociodemographic differences in psychopharmacological care among young Medicaid managed care enrollees and the common occurrence of multiple psychotropic pharmacotherapy.

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OBJECTIVE The aim of this study was to construct a sensitizing definition of certification in nursing for research purposes that can provide a foundation from which to further develop a coherent research program building evidence about the impact of certification on healthcare outcomes. BACKGROUND The lack of a single definition of certification in nursing makes it difficult to draw conclusions about the relationship between specialty certification and patient outcomes. METHODS This study was guided by the Delphi-Chaffee hybrid methodology proposed by Grant et al. DISCUSSION Constructing a single, sensitizing definition of certification: 1) provides coherency for direction of certification research; 2) serves as a guide for researchers; and 3) facilitates multimethodological approaches to exploring the relationship among the different components of the definition of certification. CONCLUSION A sensitizing definition of certification provides an opportunity for researchers to study the relationship between nursing certification and patient outcomes.

The lack of a common definition of certification in nursing must be addressed to advance research into the relationship between certification processes in nursing and healthcare outcomes.