Standardized Nursing Terminology Essay

Rutherford (2008) article Standardized Nursing Language: What Does It Mean for Nursing Practice? In this article, the author recounts a visit to a local hospital to view the recent implementation of a new coding system.Standardized Nursing Terminology Essay
During the visit, one of the nurses commented to her, “We document our care using standardized nursing languages but we don’t fully understand why we do” (Rutherford, 2008, para. 1).
How would you respond to a comment such as this one?
To Prepare:
Review the concepts of informatics as presented in the Resources, particularly Rutherford, M. (2008) Standardized Nursing Language: What Does It Mean for Nursing Practice?
Reflect on the role of a nurse leader as a knowledge worker.
Consider how knowledge may be informed by data that is collected/accessed.
The Assignment:
In a 2- to 3-page paper, address the following:
Explain how you would inform this nurse (and others) of the importance of standardized nursing terminologies.
Describe the benefits and challenges of implementing standardized nursing terminologies in nursing practice. Be specific and provide examples.
Be sure to support your paper with 3 peer-reviewed research on standardized nursing terminologies written within the last 5 years.
“accurately and thoroughly explain in detail how to inform the nurse in the scenario, as well as others, on the importance of standardized nursing terminologies”.

Describe the benefits of implementing standardized nursing terminologies in nursing practice. Be specific and provide examples.

Describe the challenges of implementing standardized nursing terminologies in nursing practice. Be specific and provide examples
Additional Guidance
The benefits and challenges of implementing SNTs should address all SNT in general. I would highly recommend the following required reading to get an overall sense of the benefits and challenges, The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT. (2017). Standard Nursing Terminologies: A Landscape Analysis. This document specifically outlines the benefits and challenges of SNLs. Although you are not required to include any course resources in this assignment, you are responsible for discussing the benefits and challenges discussed in the required readings. For example, in the ONC document the challenges of SNTs are clearly identified and you need to address some of these challenges in your paper.. Most research studies on SNTs focus on a specific language like NANDA, NIC or NOC. You would use the findings from these research studies to support your ideas on the benefits and challenges of SNTs in general.Standardized Nursing Terminology Essay

Introduction

SNTs describe a standard body of terms for nursing practice, which are essential in communicating data. SNTs are also significant for improving knowledge in practice and conducting research on nursing care quality, efficiency and effectiveness. Across the globe, there are several informal and formal nursing terminologies. However, the standard nursing terminology sets are five. Each set comprises of terms recognized by the American Nurses Association for diagnosis, intervention, and outcome.  This paper examines the strategies to use when informing nurses the significance of SNTs and discusses the implementation challenges and benefits of SNTs in nursing practice. SNTs improve the format, consistency, and content of nursing communication to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of information shared among nursing staff, other healthcare providers, third-party payers, and the public.

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Importance of SNTs

Why are SNTs important in medical practice? All healthcare providers, particularly nurses should be aware of the significance of SNTs in regards to care documentation at a time when most healthcare organizations are implementing EHRs and other forms of electronic documentation. SNTs provide a basis for exchanging healthcare information and ensures consistency in communication even as nursing informatics continues to grow (Walden University, n.d.). Besides, it is also essential for nurses to understand how ways in which the use of SNTs benefits patient outcomes and nursing practice.

Benefits of Implementing SNTs

Improve communication

SNTs promote communication among nurses’, healthcare providers, and health administrators nationally and internationally (Mykkänen, Miettinen & Saranto, 2016). Communication is vital between healthcare team members to ensure continuity and patient safety. For instance, in the process of care planning, it promotes communication by providing a framework to document nursing care, which ultimately promotes a mutual understanding and influences nursing actions towards specific outcomes.Standardized Nursing Terminology Essay

Improves the visibility of nursing interventions

Traditionally, nurses adopted informal methods to report what is done to a patient rather than using care plans and patient records. Verbal reports make actions invisible and focus on safeguarding nurses from litigation rather than focusing on the care that a patient receives. According to Macieira et al. (2017), the use of SNTs will focus on consistent and patient-centric care. Besides, it will also increase sensitivity to the activities of nursing care and highlight nurses’ contribution to outcomes of care hence increased visibility.

Improves Patient Care and Adherence to Care Standards

SNTs improve nurses’ time management and work complexity assessment. The specificity of SNTs increases nurses’ ability to spend more time with patients rather in the documentation, which also impacts patient satisfaction positively (Mykkänen, Miettinen & Saranto, 2016).

Promotes collection of data for evaluating outcomes of nursing care

Using SNTs to document nursing care guarantees relevant consistency in data collection which can be used to make comparisons on the outcomes of care based on different interventions. Since most healthcare organizations in the US are implementing electronic documentation and EHRs, when data is stored in these systems using SNTs, it will be easier to construct national, state, and local repositories for benchmarking with other healthcare institutions providing nursing care (Walden University, n.d.).

Challenges of Implementing SNTs

Standardization is a formal process. Therefore, it has its implementation challenges. According to Cubas (2015), the most significant challenge is that of different granularity levels between and within vocabularies and differentiating the contributions of medicine from nursing. Nurses or other healthcare providers might struggle to agree on standards to use globally in a specific domain and those users might fail to account for different worldviews preventing the continuity of nursing care.Standardized Nursing Terminology Essay

Implementing new vocabulary as well as new technology in nursing practice might seem awkward. Therefore, a potential challenge related to this awkwardness is that of resistance to change. Cubas (2015) explains that nurses and other healthcare providers might become intolerant to the learning process, reduced productivity, and efficiency when integrating a new method in practice.

Conclusion

SNTs describe a standard body of terms for nursing practice, which are essential in communicating data. As most healthcare organizations transition to electronic documentation and EHRs, nurses must know the importance of using SNTs to promote understanding and easy sharing of patient health information among nurses and other healthcare staff. The use of SNTs has far-reaching implications in nursing care delivery. It also demonstrates the value of nursing.

The benefits of implementing SNTs are: improves communication, promotes nursing interventions visibility and care, enhances data collection for evaluating nursing care outcomes and promotes adherence to care standards. The challenges of implementing SNTs include; granularity levels between and within vocabularies, difficulty differentiating the contributions of medicine from nursing, and nurses’ resistance to change.Standardized Nursing Terminology Essay

References

Cubas, M. R. (2015). Ensuring a unified and cross-cultural nursing language system: the challenge faced by nursing terminology development. Revista da Escola de Enfermagem da USP, 49(4), 0534-0539.

Macieira, T. G., Smith, M. B., Davis, N., Yao, Y., Wilkie, D. J., Lopez, K. D., & Keenan, G. (2017). Evidence of progress in making nursing practice visible using standardized nursing data: A systematic review. In AMIA Annual Symposium Proceedings (Vol. 2017, p. 1205). American Medical Informatics Association.

Mykkänen, M., Miettinen, M., & Saranto, K. (2016). Standardized Nursing Documentation Supports Evidence-Based Nursing Management. In Nursing Informatics (Vol. 225, pp. 466-470).

Walden University. (n.d.). The advantages of using standardized nursing language. Retrieved June 29, 2020, from https://www.waldenu.edu/online-masters-programs/master-of-science-in-nursing/resource/the-advantages-of-using-standardized-nursing-language Standardized Nursing Terminology Essay