Aims: The purpose of this study was to evaluate the part simplified chaos theory could play in the management of nursing services.
Background: As nursing care becomes more complex, practitioners need to become familiar with business planning and objective time management. There are many time-limited methods that facilitate this type of planning but few that can help practitioners to forecast the end-point outcome of the service they deliver.
Methods: A growth model was applied to a specialist service to plot service trajectory.
Results: Components of chaos theory can play a role in forecasting service outcomes and consequently the impact upon the management of such services.
Implications for nursing management: The ability to (1) track the trajectory of a service and (2) manipulate that trajectory by introducing new variables can allow managers to forward plan for service development and to evaluate the effectiveness of a service by plotting its end-point state.