The nursing terminology summit: collaboration for progress

The Nursing Terminology Summit has used collaborative processes to bring about significant changes in the development of terminology standards for nursing. This paper draws on agendas, reports, notes, and other documents from the Summit, in addition to the authors' own experience as Organizer, Steering Committee, and participants, to provide a brief history of the Summit process. The analysis identifies factors that increased the risk of failure as well as factors that fostered success. The paper concludes with lessons learned that can be applied in other arenas to promote change in medical informatics.

PathworX: an informatics tool for quality improvement

To optimize quality of care while conserving resources requires the right information and the right organizational processes. PathworX, a care management and documentation system developed at Vanderbilt, coordinates interdisciplinary care based on evidence-based best practices and provides information about the achievement of patient care goals as an indicator of quality. Using data about goal achievement and resource consumption in a process of continual quality improvement enables hospital units to reduce waste while improving patient outcomes.

Terminology standards for nursing: collaboration at the summit

OBJECTIVE

The objective of the 1999 Nursing Vocabulary Summit Conference was to seek consensus on and a common approach to the development of nursing terminology standards for use in information systems.

METHODS

A four-day invitational conference brought together authors and representatives of responsible organizations concerned with the nursing terminologies recognized or under consideration by the American Nurses Association, along with experts on language and standards and representatives of professional organizations, federal agencies, and the health informatics industry.

RESULTS

Participants distinguished between colloquial terminologies and reference terminologies, and between information models and terminology models. They agreed that most recognized nursing terminologies were colloquial terminologies and that a reference terminology was needed. They formed task forces to develop and test aspects of a reference terminology model prior to a second meeting in June 2000, at which they would determine readiness to collaborate on a single international standard.

DISCUSSION

The 1999 Nursing Vocabulary Summit Conference changed the level of discussion about nursing vocabulary standards from a debate about the relative merits of the various terminologies recognized in the United States to an examination of methods for developing and testing a reference terminology model and, eventually, a reference terminology that could serve as an international standard.