Paper Example on Impact of Standardized Nursing Terminology

According to Keenan, Standardized nursing terminology refers to the use of a common language for all nurses to interpret care (Rutherford, 2008). On the other hand, Warren and friends defined it as the setting of specific terms by medical practitioners, which facilitate documentation of their tasks. The standardized terms, according to their study, aid in various concepts like coding, defining, and identification of nursing knowledge (Warren et al., 2015). Terms that are understood by every medical practitioner should be adopted and implemented for better communication. The use of standardized languages or terminologies is vital in the nursing field since it ensures accurate and precise documentation of the patient's outcomes, care, and assessments. The importance of using these standardized nursing terminologies, the challenges as well as benefits of their implementation in the nursing field get illustrated in this essay.

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Importance of Standardized Nursing Terminology

First and foremost, standardizing the nursing language offers all nurses with a universal language that they can use to communicate among themselves. It is essential since all nurses can understand each other despite being from different hospitals, units, countries, or geographical areas. Any nurse can interpret accurately any documented information with ease. For instance, given a case where a specific patient is suffering from bleeding, maybe of the vagina, it is usually recorded by the nurses as large, medium, or small. The communication fails to offer a precise answer as to how large, medium, or small the bleeding is. If a term to describe the exact outcome gets used, the urgency and type of care to be given to the patient get identified (Rutherford, 2008). The patient, in the long run, enjoys and benefits from quality services offered to them.

Another importance is that the terms will offer a concise and complete meaning. A term will get used to generalize what is usually reported using many words. For instance, when a medical provider list "failure to progress" on the patient's outcome, other health providers understand what they mean and follow the right measures to take with the patient (Rutherford, 2008). Yet another importance is that it will make the communication appear more professional, and nurse reasoning becomes more professional too. Standardized terminology also makes nurse work appear more visible. It becomes quite easy to analyze and retrieve data from the documents since it seems in commonly known terms to them. Elimination of the informal language used by nurses while communicating with each other and adopt the use of the standardized terms will make their work appear more visible. The use of standardized terminologies for nurses can also help save time as well as make the analysis easier (Lundberg et al., 2008). As a result of the decrease in time required to document a patient's outcome, a nurse can concentrate more on the patient who, in the long run, improves their patient care.

The use of standardized nursing terminologies facilitates comprehensive planned care. According to a study conducted by Muller-Staub and friends, SNTs application in health care promoted the type of nursing care (Muller-Staub et al., 2007). The data available becomes more reliable and can impact budget planning and individual planning. Use of the standardized terminologies in the electronic health records captures the contribution nurses make toward patient care and provide their uniqueness compared to the rest of the disciplines. For instance, the application of the North American Nursing Diagnosis Association (NANDA-1) proved to be useful since it improved the patient's assessment documented quality by guiding nurses. NANDA-1, NIC, and NOC (NNN) linkages, on the other hand, aid nurses in making better decisions for patients, thus improving the quality of patient care (Tseng, 2012). Nursing Outcome Classification (NOC) also makes it easier for nurses to conclude the type of care they offer their patients.

Challenges

As a result of many countries authorizing the health records to be electronically stored, most nurses get seen to be performing well of which in the real sense lacks the intellect required. This has been so because they fail to use the right type of terms while communicating with each other. Most nurses are finding it a bid challenge, adopting the standardized terminology sets since it lacks a selection criterion that is clear and available (Tseng, 2012). The direction for use is also not well explained.

Another challenge is that there are no research reviews available of these sets of standardized terminologies in the literature; thus, it becomes quite difficult for nurses and administrators to make quick and appropriate decisions for adopting the terminology sets. Implementing the standardized language is challenging to reverse and costly, mainly when very minimal evidence gets used in its implementation. Lack of enough education regarding the standardized terminologies is yet another challenge that is facing most of the nurses. For instance, the case where Rutherford visited a local hospital, and the nurse seemed to be documenting nursing care electronically but failed to know the standardized terminologies (Rutherford, 2008).

References

Lundberg, C., Warren, J., Brokel, J., Bulechek, G., Butcher, H., McCloskey Dochterman, J., Spisla, C. (2008). Selecting a standardized terminology for the electronic health record that reveals the impact of nursing on patient care. An online journal of nursing informatics, 12(2). Retrieved from https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/3ff3/3e52839493d4d5352874ea8de34d448847c6.pdf

Muller-Staub, M., Lavin, M. A., Needham, I., & van Achterberg, T. (2007). Meeting the criteria of a nursing diagnosis classification: Evaluation of ICNP, ICF, NANDA, and ZEFP. International Journal of Nursing Studies, 44(5), 702-713. Retrieved from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0020748906000629

Rutherford, M. (2008). Standardized nursing language: What does it mean for nursing practice? OJIN: The Online Journal of Issues in Nursing, 13(1), 243-50. Retrieved from http://himssni.pbworks.com/f/Standard+Nursing+Language+OJIN.pdf

Tseng, H. C. (2012). Use of standardized nursing terminologies in electronic health records for oncology care: the impact of NANDA-I, NOC, and NIC. Retrieved from https://ir.uiowa.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=5448&context=etd

Warren, J. J., Matney, S. A., Foster, E. D., Auld, V. A., & Roy, S. L. (2015). Towards Interoperability: A new resource to support nursing terminology standards. Computers, informatics, nursing: CIN, 33(12), 515. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4690543/