Evaluation of a type definition for representing nursing activities within a concept-based terminologic system.

A terminology model is a conceptual representation that is optimized for the management of terminologic definitions. The purpose of this study was to evaluate one component of a terminology model, a type definition for nursing activity concepts. Two research questions were examined: 1) What percentage of nursing activity terms includes the three essential properties of the type definition (Delivery Mode, Activity Focus, and Recipient)? and 2) Can the nursing activity terms be reliably decomposed into the three elements of the type definition? The sample comprised 1039 non-redundant nursing activity terms collected from the health records of patients hospitalized for an AIDS-related condition. Each nursing activity term was decomposed into the three elements of the type definition by three raters. Percent agreement among the raters ranged from 91.5% to 96.2%. All terms included either an Explicit (82.0%) or Implicit (18.0%) Delivery Mode. Activity Focus was present in 95.1% of the terms in the sample. Recipient was coded as Explicit in 19.2%, Implicit in 75.9%, and Ambiguous in 4.8% of the nursing activity terms in the data set. Mapping among nursing terminologies and convergence of nursing terms within large concept-based health care terminologies has been hindered by the lack of a robust concept representation. A type definition is an essential component of such a representation. Further research is needed to refine the type definition and to incorporate it within a terminology model for nursing concepts.