Toward harmonising WHO International Classifications: a nursing perspective

A comparison between the ICNP and the ICF for expressing nursing content in the electronic health record

BACKGROUND

The use of standardised terminologies for electronic health records (EHRs) is important and a sufficient coverage of all aspects of health care is increasingly being developed worldwide. The International Classification of Functioning, Disabilities and Health (ICF) is suggested as a unifying terminology suitable in a multi-professional EHR, but the level of representation of nursing content is unclear.

OBJECTIVES

The aim was to describe lexical and semantic accordance in relation to comprehensiveness and granularity of concepts between the International Classification of Nursing Practise (ICNP) and the ICF.

METHODS

806 pre-coordinated concepts for diagnoses and outcomes in the ICNP terminology were manually mapped to 1516 concepts on level 4-6 in the ICF.

RESULTS

Several dimensions of nursing diagnoses and outcomes in the ICNP were missing in the ICF. 60% of the concepts for diagnosis and outcome in the ICNP could not be stated using the ICF while another 31% could only be matched either as a subordinate or as a superordinate concept.

CONCLUSIONS

The lexical and semantic accordance in relation to comprehensiveness and granularity between concepts in the ICNP and ICF was rather low. A large proportion of concepts for diagnoses and outcomes in the ICNP could not be satisfactorily stated using the ICF. Standardised terminologies rooted in a nursing tradition (e.g., the ICNP) is needed for communication and documentation in health care to represent the patient's health situation as well as professional diagnostic decisions and evaluations in nursing.

Analysis of nursing assessment terminology for neurological conditions and its cross-mapping with the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF): A multi-centre cross-sectional study

AIM

To analyse the application status of nursing assessment terminology for neurological conditions and determine whether the International Classification of Functioning, Disability, and Health (ICF) covers nursing assessment.

DESIGN

A multi-centre cross-sectional study.

METHODS

Four researchers extracted all nursing problems from the patients of three different hospitals and formed a pool of nursing terminology from the electronic nursing records, self-reports, family reports, medical examinations, and clinical records for all patients. The ICF Linking Rules were then used to map the nursing assessment terminology of neurological conditions with the ICF.

RESULTS

Though 37.5% of nursing assessment terms were closely related to neurological diseases, this does not appear in the existing electronic nursing assessment records. The unrecorded rate of 9 (16.1%) terms ranged from 40%-50%, while the unrecorded rate of 8 (14.3%) terms was more than 80%. Overall, 96.4% of nursing assessment terms could be described by the corresponding categories of the ICF, with 37 (66.1%) of the "same" concepts, 9 (16.1%) "similar" concepts, 6 (10.7%) "narrower" concepts (the nursing assessment terms were more specific than the ICF categories), and 2 (3.6%) "broader" concepts (the nursing assessment were less specific than the ICF categories).

How Nurses are Using the International Classifi cation of Functioning, Disability and Health: An Integrative Review

Aim: The purpose of this study is to report the results of an integrative review of use of the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) by nurses. This review is justified by the need for further investigation into use of the ICF in nursing, by nurses, so as to contribute to dialogue for the development of global, interdisciplinary and classification system comprehension. Methods: This integrative review included studies from 2001 to May 2015 in peer-reviewed journals. Two reviewers independently screened titles and abstracts for inclusion and completed data extraction. The papers were sourced from a number of electronic databases: MEDLINE/NML/PubMed, Web of Science, LILACS, CINAHL and SCIELO. Results: Twenty-six articles were included. Three themes on use of the ICF were identified: clinical nursing practice; teaching nursing students and nurses; and nursing research. Conclusion: This review helps nurses to visualise how and in what care environments the ICF is being used. It demonstrates the ICF has been used specifically in the rehabilitation nursing field, but offers some evidence of its use in occupational health as well.

Rigor in electronic health record knowledge representation: Lessons learned from a SNOMED CT clinical content encoding exercise

Rigor in clinical knowledge representation is necessary foundation for meaningful interoperability, exchange and reuse of electronic health record (EHR) data. It is critical for clinicians to understand principles and implications of using clinical standards for knowledge representation within EHRs.

PURPOSE

To educate clinicians and students about knowledge representation and to evaluate their success of applying the manual lookups method for assigning Systematized Nomenclature of Medicine Clinical Terms (SNOMED CT) concept identifiers using formally mapped concepts from the Omaha System interface terminology.

METHODS

Clinicians who were students in a doctoral nursing program conducted 21 lookups for Omaha System terms in publicly available SNOMED CT browsers. Lookups were deemed successful if results matched exactly with the corresponding code from the January 2013 SNOMED CT-Omaha System terminology cross-map.

RESULTS

Of the 21 manual lookups attempted, 12 (57.1%) were successful. Errors were due to semantic gaps differences in granularity and synonymy or partial term matching.

CONCLUSIONS

Achieving rigor in clinical knowledge representation across settings, vendors and health systems is a globally recognized challenge. Cross-maps have potential to improve rigor in SNOMED CT encoding of clinical data. Further research is needed to evaluate outcomes of using of terminology cross-maps to encode clinical terms with SNOMED CT concept identifiers based on interface terminologies.

Inter-terminology mapping of nursing problems

PURPOSE

The purpose of this study was to determine the degree of overlap between the International Classification for Nursing Practice (ICNP®) and the Systematized Nomenclature of Medicine-Clinical Terms (SNOMED-CT), with a specific focus on nursing problems, as a first step towards harmonization of content between the two terminologies.

METHODS

Work within this study was divided across two ICNP subsets. The first subset (n=238) was made up of ICNP diagnosis/outcome concepts that had been included in previous experimental mapping activities with Clinical Care Classification (CCC) and NANDA-International (NANDA-I). These ICNP concepts and their equivalent concepts within CCC and NANDA-I were used within the Unified Medical Language System (UMLS) framework to derive automatically candidate mappings to SNOMED-CT for validation by two reviewers. The second subset (n=565) included all other ICNP diagnosis/outcome concepts plus those concepts from the first subset where the candidate mappings were rejected. Mappings from the second subset to SNOMED-CT were manually identified independently by the same two reviewers. Differences between the reviewers were resolved through discussion. The observed agreement between the two reviewers was calculated along with the inter-rater reliability using Cohen's Kappa (κ).

RESULTS

For the first semi-automated mapping, according to the two reviewers the great majority of ICNP concepts (91.6%) correctly mapped to SNOMED-CT in UMLS. There was a good level of agreement between the reviewers in this part of the exercise (κ=0.7). For the second manual mapping, nearly two-thirds of ICNP concepts (61.4%) could not be mapped to any SNOMED-CT concept. There was only a moderate level of agreement between the reviewers (κ=0.45). While most of the mappings were one-to-one mappings, there were ambiguities in both terminologies which led to difficulties. The absence of mappings was due to a large extent to differences in content coverage, although lexical variations and semantic differences also played a part.

CONCLUSIONS

This study demonstrated a degree of overlap between ICNP and SNOMED-CT; it also identified significant differences in content coverage. The results from the semi-automated mapping were encouraging, particularly for 'older' ICNP content. The results from the manual mapping were less favorable suggesting a need for further enhancement of both terminologies, content development within SNOMED-CT and further research on mechanisms for harmonization.

Creating an ICNP subset: children with HIV/AIDS in developing countries

Since 1993, the International Classification of Nursing Practice has evolved as a unified language for global nursing diagnoses/outcomes and interventions. It contains 5148 terms. Population- or condition-specific subsets of terms facilitate easier and consistent use of the International Classification of Nursing Practice. One condition, care of children in developing countries with HIV/AIDS, is listed by the World Health Organization as a world health priority. In this study, the investigators identified nursing diagnoses/outcomes and intervention terms used by nurses for this population and mapped the terms to the International Classification of Nursing Practice. Terms represent healthcare at different phases along a continuum: health promotion, health maintenance, acute conditions, chronic conditions, and end-of-life care with the child as the focus surrounded by family, community, and culture. In the analysis, the investigators' process is compared with the one outlined in the Guidelines for International Classification of Nursing Practice Catalogue Development, and the match of each local and International Classification of Nursing Practice term is categorized as perfect fit, conceptual fit, partial fit, or unable to fit. A total of 53 nursing diagnosis/outcome terms and 85 intervention terms make up the subset. Eighty-two percent of local terms mapped at least partially to International Classification of Nursing Practice.

Semantic mappings and locality of nursing diagnostic concepts in UMLS

One solution for enhancing the interoperability between nursing information systems, given the availability of multiple nursing terminologies, is to cross-map existing nursing concepts. The Unified Medical Language System (UMLS) developed and distributed by the National Library of Medicine (NLM) is a knowledge resource containing cross-mappings of various terminologies in a unified framework. While the knowledge resource has been available for the last two decades, little research on the representation of nursing terminologies in UMLS has been conducted. As a first step, UMLS semantic mappings and concept locality were examined for nursing diagnostic concepts or problems selected from three terminologies (i.e., CCC, ICNP, and NANDA-I) along with corresponding SNOMED CT concepts. The evaluation of UMLS semantic mappings was conducted by measuring the proportion of concordance between UMLS and human expert mappings. The semantic locality of nursing diagnostic concepts was assessed by examining the associations of select concepts and the placement of the nursing concepts on the Semantic Network and Group. The study found that the UMLS mappings of CCC and NANDA-I concepts to SNOMED CT were highly concordant to expert mappings. The level of concordance in mappings of ICNP to SNOMED CT, CCC and NANDA-I within UMLS was relatively low, indicating the need for further research and development. Likewise, the semantic locality of ICNP concepts could be further improved. Various stakeholders need to collaborate to enhance the NLM knowledge resource and the interoperability of nursing data within the discipline as well as across health-related disciplines.