Challenges in the development and testing of a reference terminology model for nursing interventions

The purpose of this paper is to report the work of the Interventions Group of the first Nursing Terminology Summit (1999) and to describe the challenges and insights of this group as they have evolved a reference terminology model for nursing interventions. When the group began its work as part of the first meeting of the Nursing Terminology Summit, it had the overall objective of proposing the intervention component of a reference terminology model for nursing. Although there is not a definitive proposal for this to date, the group's exploration and analysis has clarified and explicated both the types of models of clinical information and the current " state of the art" of formal representations of nursing interventions as well as the relationship of nursing languages to these formal representations. In addition, it is our perspective that the work of this group is representative of the process and challenges facing many similar groups currently engaged in modeling efforts. Consequently, critical success factors of such efforts are identified and discussed. This paper reports both the specific outputs of the group related to progress in defining a terminology model of nursing interventions and observations and lessons learned regarding consensus modeling work.