Toward data standards for clinical nursing information.

OBJECTIVE: Develop standard terms and codes for recording nursing care information in patient records to permit relevant data to be abstracted into a shared database for effectiveness research.
DESIGN: A collaborative effort by the University of Virginia, Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, and the University Hospital Consortium to develop a set of terms to represent specific examples of nursing diagnoses/patient care problems, nursing interventions/patient care activities, and patient outcomes. Terms found in standards of care are being compiled, classified, and coded.
RESULTS: Standard terminology and codes have been developed for 209 nursing diagnoses/patient care problems, 122 expected patient outcomes, and 545 interventions/patient care activities. The terms come from five nursing units in one hospital and from two units in a second hospital. Preliminary findings suggest that in the specialty areas for which terms have been developed, the terms are adequate to capture these types of nursing data in the patient record.