[International Classification for Nursing Practice: technological instrument for professional practice].

The use of information technologies are considered as instruments that can do that nursing practice becomes visible in health data, local, national and internationally, in way to influence the elaboration of health and education policies. The development of nursing classification systems is approached, with emphasis in the International Classification for Nursing Practice - ICNP, with technological instrument for professional practice, which has as one of the principal criteria for its construction to be sufficiently wide and sensitive to cultural diversity, so that it serves to the multiples purposes requested by the different countries where it will be used.