Furthering the development of standardized nursing terminology through an ENP®-ICNP® cross-mapping

Assessing the relation of the coded nursing care and nursing intensity data: Towards the exploitation of clinical data for administrative use and the design of nursing workload

Patient-care data from the electronic health record systems are increasingly in demand for re-use in administration and resource planning. Nursing documentation with coded concepts is expected to produce more reliable data, fulfilling better requirements for re-use. The aim was to ascertain what kind of relation exist between coded nursing diagnoses, nursing interventions, and nursing intensity and to discuss the possibilities for re-using nursing data for workload design. We analysed the retrospective nursing records of 794 patients documented by the Finnish Care Classification and nursing intensity data assessed by the Oulu Patient Classification over a 15-day period in nine inpatient units at a university hospital. Using the generalised linear mixed model, the clear relationship between the number of coded nursing notes and nursing intensity levels were ascertained. The number of coded nursing notes increases when the nursing intensity increases. The outcomes construct a good basis for continuing elaboration of electronic health record data re-use.

Understanding the use of standardized nursing terminology and classification systems in published research: A case study using the International Classification for Nursing Practice(®)

BACKGROUND

In the era of evidenced based healthcare, nursing is required to demonstrate that care provided by nurses is associated with optimal patient outcomes, and a high degree of quality and safety. The use of standardized nursing terminologies and classification systems are a way that nursing documentation can be leveraged to generate evidence related to nursing practice. Several widely-reported nursing specific terminologies and classifications systems currently exist including the Clinical Care Classification System, International Classification for Nursing Practice(®), Nursing Intervention Classification, Nursing Outcome Classification, Omaha System, Perioperative Nursing Data Set and NANDA International. However, the influence of these systems on demonstrating the value of nursing and the professions' impact on quality, safety and patient outcomes in published research is relatively unknown.

PURPOSE

This paper seeks to understand the use of standardized nursing terminology and classification systems in published research, using the International Classification for Nursing Practice(®) as a case study.

METHODS

A systematic review of international published empirical studies on, or using, the International Classification for Nursing Practice(®) were completed using Medline and the Cumulative Index for Nursing and Allied Health Literature.

RESULTS

Since 2006, 38 studies have been published on the International Classification for Nursing Practice(®). The main objectives of the published studies have been to validate the appropriateness of the classification system for particular care areas or populations, further develop the classification system, or utilize it to support the generation of new nursing knowledge. To date, most studies have focused on the classification system itself, and a lesser number of studies have used the system to generate information about the outcomes of nursing practice.

CONCLUSIONS

Based on the published literature that features the International Classification for Nursing Practice, standardized nursing terminology and classification systems appear to be well developed for various populations, settings and to harmonize with other health-related terminology systems. However, the use of the systems to generate new nursing knowledge, and to validate nursing practice is still in its infancy. There is an opportunity now to utilize the well-developed systems in their current state to further what is know about nursing practice, and how best to demonstrate improvements in patient outcomes through nursing care.

Healthcare professionals' views on the mutual consistency of the Finnish Classification of Nursing Interventions and the Oulu Patient Classification

BACKGROUND

Various classification schemes have been used for clinical and administrative purposes, but their concepts have seldom been cross-mapped. Cross-mapping is a formal method that can be used for examining existing classifications' validity.

AIM

The aim was to cross-map two nursing classifications - the Finnish Classification of Nursing Interventions (FiCNI, version 3.0), developed for structured nursing documentation, and the Oulu Patient Classification (OPCq), created for daily assessment of nursing intensity - and evaluate their mutual consistency. The objective was to obtain information on the content equivalence of the two classifications and the consistency of the concepts used, to inform further development of both.

METHODS

The Delphi method was utilised, with a panel of experts that included terminology developers, researchers, teachers and nurses (n = 16). Four Delphi rounds were required. In these, panellists selected the most relevant content from the OPCq subareas (n = 6) for each FiCNI main category and subcategory (n = 307). In cases of doubt, respondents were asked to justify their choices.

RESULTS

Response rates ranged from 68.8 to 93.8% in the Delphi rounds. After three rounds, 81.4% of the FiCNI categories were cross-mapped with sufficient consensus. A fourth round was needed for 57 FiCNI categories (18.6%). Most FiCNI categories (29.3%) were cross-mapped to the OPCq's subarea 2. Deficiencies in the concepts' clarity and in the OPCq's content areas complicated the cross-mapping. The most unambiguous categories of the FiCNI were found in the respiratory, cardiac and activity components. The components showing greatest ambiguity were skin integrity, mental balance and safety.

CONCLUSION

The content and concepts used in both classifications need further development. The cross-mapping results can be utilised for developing reuse of structured nursing data in assessment of nursing intensity and in decision-making in human-resources planning.

Design and usability study of an iconic user interface to ease information retrieval of medical guidelines

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE

Doc'CISMeF (DC) is a semantic search engine used to find resources in CISMeF-BP, a quality controlled health gateway, which gathers guidelines available on the internet in French. Visualization of Concepts in Medicine (VCM) is an iconic language that may ease information retrieval tasks. This study aimed to describe the creation and evaluation of an interface integrating VCM in DC in order to make this search engine much easier to use.

METHODS

Focus groups were organized to suggest ways to enhance information retrieval tasks using VCM in DC. A VCM interface was created and improved using the ergonomic evaluation approach. 20 physicians were recruited to compare the VCM interface with the non-VCM one. Each evaluator answered two different clinical scenarios in each interface. The ability and time taken to select a relevant resource were recorded and compared. A usability analysis was performed using the System Usability Scale (SUS).

RESULTS

The VCM interface contains a filter based on icons, and icons describing each resource according to focus group recommendations. Some ergonomic issues were resolved before evaluation. Use of VCM significantly increased the success of information retrieval tasks (OR=11; 95% CI 1.4 to 507). Nonetheless, it took significantly more time to find a relevant resource with VCM interface (101 vs 65 s; p=0.02). SUS revealed 'good' usability with an average score of 74/100.

CONCLUSIONS

VCM was successfully implemented in DC as an option. It increased the success rate of information retrieval tasks, despite requiring slightly more time, and was well accepted by end-users.

Evaluating alignment quality between iconic language and reference terminologies using similarity metrics

BACKGROUND

Visualization of Concepts in Medicine (VCM) is a compositional iconic language that aims to ease information retrieval in Electronic Health Records (EHR), clinical guidelines or other medical documents. Using VCM language in medical applications requires alignment with medical reference terminologies. Alignment from Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) thesaurus and International Classification of Diseases - tenth revision (ICD10) to VCM are presented here. This study aim was to evaluate alignment quality between VCM and other terminologies using different measures of inter-alignment agreement before integration in EHR.

METHODS

For medical literature retrieval purposes and EHR browsing, the MeSH thesaurus and the ICD10, both organized hierarchically, were aligned to VCM language. Some MeSH to VCM alignments were performed automatically but others were performed manually and validated. ICD10 to VCM alignment was entirely manually performed. Inter-alignment agreement was assessed on ICD10 codes and MeSH descriptors, sharing the same Concept Unique Identifiers in the Unified Medical Language System (UMLS). Three metrics were used to compare two VCM icons: binary comparison, crude Dice Similarity Coefficient (DSCcrude), and semantic Dice Similarity Coefficient (DSCsemantic), based on Lin similarity. An analysis of discrepancies was performed.

RESULTS

MeSH to VCM alignment resulted in 10,783 relations: 1,830 of which were manually performed and 8,953 were automatically inherited. ICD10 to VCM alignment led to 19,852 relations. UMLS gathered 1,887 alignments between ICD10 and MeSH. Only 1,606 of them were used for this study. Inter-alignment agreement using only validated MeSH to VCM alignment was 74.2% [70.5-78.0]CI95%, DSCcrude was 0.93 [0.91-0.94]CI95%, and DSCsemantic was 0.96 [0.95-0.96]CI95%. Discrepancy analysis revealed that even if two thirds of errors came from the reviewers, UMLS was nevertheless responsible for one third.

CONCLUSIONS

This study has shown strong overall inter-alignment agreement between MeSH to VCM and ICD10 to VCM manual alignments. VCM icons have now been integrated into a guideline search engine (http://www.cismef.org) and a health terminologies portal (http://www.hetop.eu).

Mapping the Diagnosis Axis of an Interface Terminology to the NANDA International Taxonomy

Background. Nursing terminologies are designed to support nursing practice but, as with any other clinical tool, they should be evaluated. Cross-mapping is a formal method for examining the validity of the existing controlled vocabularies. Objectives. The study aims to assess the inclusiveness and expressiveness of the nursing diagnosis axis of a newly implemented interface terminology by cross-mapping with the NANDA-I taxonomy. Design/Methods. The study applied a descriptive design, using a cross-sectional, bidirectional mapping strategy. The sample included 728 concepts from both vocabularies. Concept cross-mapping was carried out to identify one-to-one, negative, and hierarchical connections. The analysis was conducted using descriptive statistics. Results. Agreement of the raters' mapping achieved 97%. More than 60% of the nursing diagnosis concepts in the NANDA-I taxonomy were mapped to concepts in the diagnosis axis of the new interface terminology; 71.1% were reversely mapped. Conclusions. Main results for outcome measures suggest that the diagnosis axis of this interface terminology meets the validity criterion of cross-mapping when mapped from and to the NANDA-I taxonomy.

Uma visão da produção científica internacional sobre a classificação internacional para a prática de enfermagem

A Classificação Internacional para a Prática de Enfermagem (CIPE®) é um sistema classificatório que visa padronizar uma linguagem universal para Enfermagem. Este artigo propõe identificar os estudos desenvolvidos no âmbito mundial abordando a CIPE®, categorizando-os segundo suas finalidades. Trata-se de uma revisão de literatura, em base de dados da Biblioteca Virtual em Saúde, pelo o termo "ICNP", com abrangência até 2009. Foram encontrados 124 artigos; 65 analisados, cujo conteúdo foi agrupado em nove categorias: abordagens gerais; aplicabilidade à prática; avaliação de classificações; experiências com recursos computacionais; desenvolvimento e inclusão de termos; abordagem sobre sistemas classificatórios; uso para ancorar a construção de declarações de enfermagem; traduções; e outros. Verificou-se que poucos trabalhos apresentam projetos ou avaliam resultados de aplicações práticas da CIPE®; a maioria aborda aspectos conceituais ou realiza comparações com outras classificações. Diversos trabalhos concluem sobre a adequação e relevância da CIPE®, mas apontam a necessidade de aperfeiçoamento.

ILISI® digital index of the Italian scientific literature of nursing

The IPASVI Rome Nursing Board-Centre of Excellence-began the project of building a free accessed database, Ilisi®, where the main Italian nursing and health-related journals could be consulted (including the few peer reviewed, at international level, Italian journals of nursing). Today, it includes the abstracts of more than 2700 articles from 2004 of about 25 Italian journals of nursing and/or related to nursing disciplines. The Ilisi® project has got with Thisi-Italian thesaurus of nursing science-a controlled vocabulary specifically built for nursing science, its tool of feasibility. This project was developed to foster nursing scholarship in Italy and to offer a free controlled database for all stakeholders (students, nurses, other health professionals, and scholars). The abstracts of the articles of these Italian journals are a tool for lifelong learning and constitute a patrimony for nursing science even at a wider level if this patrimony could be translated in English that will be a further step of the project. The project group who developed this database is going to value Italian nursing literature production and implement an electronic tool that, in the near future, might be used by all students and healthcare professionals in the world. Besides, with this project scientific productions by Italian students, nurses could be encouraged. More of them need to be trained in the use of the most frequently used databases, and Ilisi® could be a good training experience for them.