[Development of a specialized nursing language from the nursing science perspective: why and what for?]

Language is an essential part of communication. This article focusses on the development of a professional nursing language (taxonomy). It is discussed that nurses' communication with patients is determined by verbal and nonverbal interactions. In the development of a professional nursing language, nurses will primarily rely on the verbal communication with patients, by using a patient's information that is objective and embodies observable data, that can be numerically quantified and statistically processed. This "objective" information lends itself to be systematized and classified. However, there is also the domain of nonverbal communication, the "grey" area of interaction, in which the nurse has to rely on her clinical experience when interpreting a patient's body language and symbolic interaction. This "subjective" information can be complex in its meaning and requires sophisticated professional skills in the interpretation of symbols and sounds. Nurses' clinical expertise is particularly required in this nonverbal interaction domain. Whereas physicians' prime responsibility lies in the deductive reasoning of symptoms until a medical diagnosis can be determined, nurses' prime responsibility covers the inductive reasoning of a patient's reactions to disease and illness, the observation of interaction and behaviour through which a nursing diagnosis is derived. Somewhere the medical and nursing process overlap; a physician will also pay attention to a patient's reaction to illness, whereas the nurse has to rely on her knowledge and experience of disease and impairment. It is argued that the construction of a nursing taxonomy can be no more than a means toward the goal in providing comprehensive nursing care.