The nurse-patient trajectory framework.

The development of nursing knowledge should give structure and form to the practice of nursing. The development of Nursing Process Theory resulted from early nursing observations and inferences from nursing practice that resulted in formal data accumulation processes, mutual correspondence between nurses and patients, and exchange of information. The development of the nursing process discipline helped to substantiate the need for professional nursing services. The shifts towards examining the links between processes and outcomes, professional accountability, and classification of distinct nursing functions have influenced the development of information systems. The Nurse-Patient Trajectory Framework described in this paper may be used to show the relationships between the virtual information system and the real world that it affects. The framework is visualized along two separate and distinct nurse and patient trajectories.