Ray of hope

The World Health Organization and International Council of Nurses have revealed a grim picture of global mental health services. But there are some glimmers of light.

Nursing research: what is it and how can dermatology nurses use it?

The International Council of Nurses (2007) defines nursing research as a systemic inquiry that seeks to obtain new nursing knowledge for the benefit of patients, families, and communities and includes all aspects of health that are of interest to nursing including health promotion, disease prevention, and care during illness and recovery or towards a peaceful death. There is an increased amount of clinical research available to nurses and now we are challenged to utilize this knowledge to improve patient care. Just like Florence Nightingale, nurses today need to make observations, collect data, and use the analysis of that data to support and guide current nursing care.

Cross-mapping ICNP terms with Taiwanese gynecological nursing records

Cross-mapping the terms of International Classification for Nursing Practice (ICNP) with the handwritten nursing records of gynecological patients at one district of private teaching hospital in the south of Taiwan was conducted in July and August, 2004. The purpose of this study was to validate the applicability of ICNP for electronic nursing records in a gynecological setting. A Chinese version of the ICNP beta 2 browser was used to code nursing record sentences. Medical charts were reviewed until data were saturated. A total of sixty-two patient records were analyzed, producing 6,327 sentences, this included 1,918 sentences on nursing phenomena (30.3%) and 4,409 sentences on nursing action (69.7%). The ratio between the two was about 1:2.3. Coded sentences were compared according to the four levels of applicability with the original records, each was identified as a "perfect fit", "conceptual fit", "partial fit", or "unable to fit". Of the 6,327 sentences, 2,041 (32.3%) were designated as "perfect fit", 2,457 (38.8%) as "conceptual fit", 1,663 (26.3%) as "partial fit", and 166 (2.6%) as "unable to fit". The top ten most described nursing phenomena included: acute pain, high temperature, conscious change, potential infection risk, state of mind change, potential risk patient's mobility change endurance level, gastrointestinal function obstacles, changes in urination, anxiety, and diarrhea. The top ten most described nursing actions included: observe surgical wounds, monitor vital signs, changes of mentality, instruction on medication, arranging clinical check ups, wound infection prevention, urinary drainage tube and urine nature observation, checking for vaginal drainage, pre/post-operative healthcare, and discharge planning. Study results indicated that 71.1% of sentences could be cross-mapped. Further validation is suggested to validate ICNP in other gynecological hospitals.

Representing nursing practice: evaluating the effectiveness of a nursing classification system

The purpose of this study was to examine the effectiveness of the International Classification for Nursing Practice (ICNP) in representing the contributions of nursing to health-care outcomes in Canada. The ICNP BetaVersion was used to code retrospective nursing data extracted from patient records originating in acute care, in-patient mental health care, home care, and long-term-care practice settings. In spite of wide variation in documentation practices, ICNP achieved matches with the majority of nursing data. The study revealed areas for improvement in the ICNP BetaVersion, specifically with regard to granularity related to the use of natural language terms and professional terms. Recommendations for further development through research in nursing-sensitive outcomes are discussed.

The ICNP-BaT--a multilingual web-based tool to support the collaborative translation of the International Classification for Nursing Practice (ICNP)

To ease and speed up the translation of the ICNP version 1 into the German language a web service was developed to support the collaborative work of all Austrian, Swiss, and German translators and subsequently of the evaluators of the resultant translation. The web service does help to support a modified Delphi technique. Since the web service is multilingual by design it can facilitate the translation of the ICNP into other languages as well. The process chosen can be adopted by other projects involved in translating terminologies.

A Pathway for Moral Reasoning in Home for Moral Reasoning in Home Healthcare

Ethical issues arise in the practice of infusing nursing, and when they do, the home care nurse can find guidance in the code of ethics. This article addresses the importance of the code of ethics and introduces a framework for decision-making to assist the home care nurse in determining a course of action in the face of ethical quandaries.

Mapping of Nursing Records Into the NIC and the ICNP in a Korean Oriental-Medicine Hospital

This study uses mapping methodology to examine the applicability of the Nursing Interventions Classification and the International Classification of Nursing Practice to nursing practice in a Korean Oriental-medicine hospital. Data were collected from the nursing records of 56 stroke patients in one unit, and intervention statements were mapped into NIC and ICNP. Of 147 unique nursing intervention statements extracted, 136 (92.52%) could be mapped into NIC and 99 (67.35%) statements could be completely mapped into ICNP. Using mapping methodology, this study validates that both NIC and ICNP would be useful for documenting nursing care in a Korean hospital, but it also identifies additional concepts that need to be represented in both of these standardized nursing languages. It is recommended that nurses be more careful in documenting their interventions and also that SNLs be developed further to more completely represent nursing practice.

Cross-Mapping Between Three Terminologies With the International Standard Nursing Reference Terminology Model

PURPOSE

The International Standards Organization's (ISO) International Standard IS 18104 should assist the nursing profession to integrate their terminologies into computer systems and healthcare reference terminologies. The purpose of this study is to cross-map between different terminologies; that is, to determine if concepts in one terminology are similar to concepts in another terminology.

METHODS

The ISO standard was used to test the degree to which three terminologies could be cross-mapped to each other. Concepts and terms were selected, their equivalence determined by experts, and the specific concepts were dissected or broken down to their constituent parts.

RESULTS

Based on experts' selections from the three classifications, equivalent concepts were identified. Those concepts deemed equivalent were dissected, thus revealing whether the components of the nursing diagnostic concepts such as focus, judgment, and other attributes of the ISO standard matched. Based on the dissection of each diagnosis, the decision was made whether mapping was possible or not.

CONCLUSIONS

The dissection revealed that several nursing diagnostic concepts can easily be interchanged, while others cannot or can be mapped only for specific purposes (e.g., clinical or aggregate use). This implies that for some concepts it does not matter which terminology is used, and in other cases it does because of different meanings.