Page 367 - Encyclopedia of Nursing Research

334 n NuRSING eDuCATION

to refine the NIC classification. updating and 1998). Currently methods that test the link-
enhancement of each of these classifications ages of these classifications with specific
N is a continuous endeavor to keep them cur- populations of patients linking diagnoses,
rent. Information on how to submit and out- outcomes, and interventions can be used to
come or intervention is available in the latest refine the knowledge base of nursing. For
editions of NIC and NOC. Scroggins (2008) example, a recent study by Head et al. (2011)
clearly described the process to submit a new identified the nursing diagnoses, interven-
or revised nursing diagnosis to NANDA tions, and patient outcomes for older adults
International. hospitalized with pneumonia. In addition,
In addition, there is a great need for effectiveness research in nursing requires
nurses to be educated on how to use these the use of standardized nursing concepts for
classifications. Most students are now intro- nursing diagnoses, outcomes, and interven-
duced to these languages in their educational tions. Guidelines for conducting effective-
programs, but many nurses in practice need ness research have been published by Titler,
to learn these classifications and use them Dochterman, and Reed (2004). The classifica-
in their practice. This is a challenge for most tions can be used with many of the current
health care organizations. Nursing data that nursing theories as a framework for pro-
have eluded our profession for years are pos- viding care. examples of these applications
sible to collect using these classifications. can be found in the literature (Farren, 2009;
Nurses can then collect and analyze nursing Kumar, 2007).
data to improve practice. Many nurses con- The use of nursing standardized termi-
tinue to use these classifications in a paper nologies is critical to nurses being able to eval-
care planning format because vendors have uate practice across health care settings and
been slow to develop products that clearly specialties. The nursing profession has been
support nursing practice in an electronic for- developing terminology to describe nurs-
mat. The advent of an electronic health record ing diagnoses, nursing interventions, and
that serves nursing needs for data is essential patient outcomes for a relatively short time
to our practice. in the history of nursing. We are at a critical
Nursing classification development point in the development of nursing science
efforts have their foundations built on con- and our knowledge base. Classifications such
cept development methods. These methods as the NANDA International Classification
can be used by any discipline to refine the of nursing diagnoses, the NOC, and the NIC
concepts of interest (Avant, 1900; Lunney, are important to the continued development
2009; Rodgers & Knafl, 2000; Walker & Avant, of our profession.
1988). Other methods used to develop these
classifications have been a combination of Sue Moorhead
inductive, deductive, qualitative, and quan-
titative approaches (Bulechek et al., 2008;
Maas, Johnson, & Moorhead, 1996; Moorhead
et al., 2008). For the development of nurs- NursiNg educatioN
ing diagnoses, common approaches include
content validation (Fehring, 1987) for refin-
ing or developing new diagnoses, construct, Three hospital training programs, modeled
and criterion-related validity to establish on the work of Florence Nightingale in the
the stability and coherence of the concepts. united Kingdom, were established in the
This can be studied using reliability, epide- united States in 1873. In 1907, a Department of
miological, outcome, causal analysis, and Nursing and Health was initiated at Teachers
generalizability studies (Parker & Lunney, College, Columbia university, to provide