Toward standardising nursing language in New Zealand

Historically nursing in New Zealand has not used any standardised means to classify practice. In a rapidly developing health information technology (IT) sector this raises serious questions about documentation processes, information management and knowledge development nursing. Recently the Nursing Council of New Zealand has redefined nursing practice, included documentation skills and information management as core competencies within the Registered Nurse and Nurse Practitioner Scopes of Practice (2004) and included information technology as core curricula content within pre-registration nursing programmes. This opinion paper will argue that continued lack of description and analysis of nursing practice in this country will enhance nursing vulnerability. It will background the extent of this issue and outline a project that aims to explore the contextual issues, test a language embedded with a clinical information system and develop a procedural framework to guide the implementation of automated means to describe, compare, examine and analyse nursing practices and processes within New Zealand. The framework will take into account the uniqueness of New Zealand nursing located within international positions and will be a first step toward using a standardised professional language embedded in clinical information systems.