Nursing process outcome linkage research: issues, current status, and health policy implications

Area of Science:

• Nursing Informatics
• Health Services Research
• Clinical Effectiveness

Background:

• Growing interest in using large clinical datasets to evaluate healthcare quality and costs.
• Need for nursing-sensitive outcomes sensitive to nursing interventions.
• Challenges in amassing and utilizing large nursing datasets for effectiveness studies due to slow development of nursing classifications and standards.

Purpose of the Study:

• Review nursing process-outcome research and identify challenges in nursing effectiveness research.
• Clarify issues in developing uniform nursing datasets, defining outcomes, and ensuring data quality.
• Discuss implications for nursing practice, knowledge generation, and health policy formulation.

Main Methods:

• Literature search to identify common frameworks and evolving nursing information standards.
• Review of existing nursing languages, reference terminologies, and information models.
• Analysis of issues related to uniform datasets, outcome definitions, data quality, and system design.

Main Results:

• A common framework for nursing information is emerging, including standardized languages and data models.
• Progress has been made in developing nursing languages and reference terminologies across settings.
• Significant challenges persist in uniform dataset development, outcome definition, data quality, and analysis methods.

Conclusions:

• Nursing information systems offer potential for documenting practice and analyzing large datasets to improve performance and knowledge.
• Addressing challenges in data standardization and analysis is critical for evidence-based nursing practice and policy.
• Further research and initiatives are needed to overcome existing barriers in nursing effectiveness research.