2. Introduction
The health care system is driven by the need to provide high-quality patient-
centered care.
Nursing is indispensable in the achievement of that objective because the
nurses are expected to perform at a higher level.
In so doing, the nurses need to communicate their contribution to patient
care the other members of the healthcare team.
That said, there is the need for the nurses all over the world to develop a
standardized nursing language that will help in the communication among
and between nurses and other professionals in the health care industry.
3. What is Standardized Nursing Language?
Standardized Nursing Language refers to the acceptable and approved
vocabularies that are used to describe nursing care in relation to diagnosis,
interventions, and outcomes.
SNL is essential in providing the nurses with a conventional means of
communication. For example, when a nurse is talking about stage III
pressure ulcer, SNL ensures that all the nurses across the globe understand
what the nurse is describing (Rutherford, 2008) .
4. Examples of Standardized Nursing Languages
The committee in the American Nurses Association (ANA) recognizes 13
standardized data element sets and terminologies that support nursing practice
However, the most popular of these are :
1) 1. North American Nursing Diagnosis Association-International (NANDA-I),
2) 2. Nursing Interventions Classification (NIC)
3) 3. Nursing Outcomes Classification (NOC)
The three are essential because they represent the nursing process, research
supports them, and they facilitate the continuity of care in the entire healthcare
industry (Törnvall & Jansson, 2017)
5. The importance of using Standardized
Language
1. Enhanced Data Collection to Evaluate Nursing Care Outcomes
The SNL enables the nurses to illustrate the care received by the patients
and to document the effects of that care based on the patients’ outcomes. In
so doing, the SNL facilitates the comparison of nursing care across different
settings and databases.
For example, using the SNL like NANDA, NOC, and NIC, the nurses’
activities are easily described alongside medical diagnosis, interventions
and the impacts improve the patient outcomes (Törnvall & Jansson, 2017).
6. Cont’d
2. Better communication between healthcare professionals
SNL enables the nurses to use computerized nursing documentation systems
that are effective in enhancing consistent documentation and improving
communication and delivery of patient-centered care.
As such, using a standardized language to communicate such as the North
American Nursing Diagnosis, the nurses efficiently communicate when
transferring or referring patients to other facilities (Park & Tucker, 2017)
7. References
Rutherford, M. (2008). Standardized nursing language: What does it mean
for nursing practice? OJIN: The Online Journal of Issues in Nursing,13(1).
Park, H., & Tucker, D. A. (2017). Capturing Key NANDA‐I Nursing
Diagnoses From Actual Clinical Data for Patients With Heart
Failure. International journal of nursing knowledge, 28(1), 30-36.
Törnvall, E., & Jansson, I. (2017). Preliminary evidence for the usefulness
of standardized nursing terminologies in different fields of application: a
literature review. International journal of nursing knowledge, 28(2), 109-
119.
Editor's Notes
Standardized Nursing Language
The health care system is driven by the need to provide high-quality patient-centered care. Nursing is indispensable in the achievement of that objective because the nurses are expected to perform at a higher level. In so doing, the nurses need to communicate their contribution to patient care the other members of the healthcare team. Otherwise, their efforts would remain invisible. That said, there is the need for the nurses all over the world to develop a standardized nursing language that will help in the communication among and between nurses and other professionals in the health care industry.
Language is a system of communication that enables the human beings to express themselves. Standardized languages, on the other hand, are used by different professional groups to identify themselves. That said, Rutherford (2008) affirms that the Standardized Nursing Language refers to the acceptable and approved vocabularies that are used to describe nursing care in relation to diagnosis, interventions, and outcomes. SNL is essential in providing the nurses with a conventional means of communication. For example, the SNL ensures that when a nurse is talking about stage III pressure ulcer, all the nurses across the globe understand what the nurse is describing.
The committee in the American Nurses Association (ANA) recognizes 13 standardized data element sets and terminologies that support nursing practice. Törnvall & Jansson (2017) assert that the 13 nursing languages were identified because the nursing data cannot be compared and analyzed when different institutions are using different terminologies. Although ANA recognizes thirteen standardized nursing languages, Rutherford (2008) asserts that the most popular of these are North American Nursing Diagnosis Association-International (NANDA-I), Nursing Interventions Classification (NIC) and Nursing Outcomes Classification (NOC). Reason being, the three are not only developed but also applicable in clinical practice, nursing administration, and nursing education. The North American Nursing Diagnosis Association-International was developed by a team of nurse from the United States and Canada who wanted to identify and categorize health problems within the nursing domain.
According to Park & Tucker (2017), in 2002, however, NANDA changed its name to (NANDA-I) because there was the need to indicate the involvement of nurses from overseas. On the other hand, the Nursing Interventions Classification (NIC) and Nursing Outcomes Classification (NOC) began in 1987 and 1991 respectively. The three are essential because they represent the nursing process, research supports them, and they facilitate the continuity of care in the entire healthcare industry.
The SNL enables the nurses to illustrate the care received by the patients and to document the effects of that care based on the patients’ outcomes. In so doing, the SNL facilitates the comparison of nursing care across different settings and databases. For example, using the SNL like NANDA, NOC, and NIC, the nurses’ activities are easily described alongside medical diagnosis, interventions and the impacts improve the patient outcomes.
According to Park & Tucker (2017), nurses, throughout history, have documented nursing care using the unit specific method. Accordingly, these methods have resulted to misunderstanding and misinterpretation of the care provided across settings. However, using a standardized language to communicate such as the North American Nursing Diagnosis, the nurses can efficiently communicate when transferring or referring patients to other facilities.
