Role of the ANA in Nursing Standardized Terminologies
The first modern recognition of the importance of nursing documentation can be traced to Harriet Werley.(1) In 1960 she succeeded in having the ANAs committee on research and studies include a section on communication and decision making in nursing.(2).
The American Nurses Association (ANA) in 1986 passed a resolution to promote the development of computerized nursing information systems in nursing practice. (3) To implement this resolution in 1989 they created the Steering Committee on Databases to Support Clinical Practice (SCD) whose purpose was to monitor and support the development and evolution of nursing standardized terminologies. (4) One of their charges was to develop criteria for recognizing the nursing standardized languages and data sets that were being developed. The SCD had “…recommended that the profession work toward the development of a unified nursing language system that would allow linking or mapping of similar terms retaining the integrity and purpose of each specific scheme/vocabulary…” (4)p 49 instead of recognizing only one system. At that time only the North American Nursing Diagnosis Association (NANDA), Nursing Interventions Classification (NIC), Nursing Outcomes Classification (NOC), the Omaha System and what was then called the Home Health Classification (Now the Clinical Care Classification) existed. Several investigators recognized that the current terminologies were inadequate to capture clinical practice in the computer-based system. (4)
The criteria for recognition included but was not limited to: a rationale for the development of the terminology, that it be clinically useful, that there be a named group responsible for the maintenance and revision of the terminology, and that the terms be clear and unambiguous.(5) In addition, this committee was charged with recognizing the terminologies that were useful in nursing and met the criteria. In 1999 the committee name was changed to the Committee for Nursing Practice Information Infrastructure (CNPII) which committee continued the charges. On March 13, 2013, the ANA citing the current healthcare environment and standards development discontinued this committee. Unfortunately, the original dream of merging the existing terminologies into a unified nursing language failed. The result is that in the 24 years the ANA committees were active, they recognized, (NOT approved) two minimum data sets and 11 nursing terminologies, one of which was retired in 2006.
In 1995 in an effort to encourage electronic medical records vendors to implement a nursing terminology, the Nursing Information and Data Set Evaluation Center (NIDSEC) was established. It had two goals: to provide support to vendors in developing software that supported nursing and provide buyers of these systems with a measure of quality.(4)The vendor evaluation criteria developed included the use of the nomenclature, clinical content, a clinical data repository, and a coding scheme that would provide a unique identifier for each concept. Unfortunately, only two vendors ever took advantage of this service and this committee too was terminated.
References
1 Ozbolt JG. Harriet Helen Werley, PhD, RN, FAAN, FACMI: Lieutenant Colonel, U.S. Army (Ret.) October 12, 1914—October 14, 2002. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association. 2003 March 1, 2003;10(2):224-5.
2 American Nurses’ Association CoRaS. ANA Blueprint for Research in Nursing. American Journal of Nursing. 1962;62(8):69-71.
3 Elfrink VL, Bakken S, Coenen A, Bickford CJ. Standardized nursing vocabularies: A foundation for quality care. Seminars in Oncology Nursing. 2001 February;17(1):18-23.
4 Henry SB, Warren J, Zielstorff RD. Nursing data, classification systems, and quality indicators: What every HIM professional needs to know. Journal of AHIMA. 1998 May;69(5):48-53;5-6.
5 Beyea SC. Standardized nursing vocabularies and the peri-operative nursing data set. CIN Plus. 2000;3(2):1:5-6.
Created June 23, 2014
