Using bibliometrics to support your selection of a nursing terminology set

Nurses are being pressured to integrate standardized nursing terminology into the electronic health record to enable the representation and evaluation of nursing practice. Five terminology sets are recognized by the American Nurses Association that contain terms to represent nursing diagnoses, outcomes, and intervention: CCC, ICNP, NANDA/NOC/NIC, Omaha System, and PNDS. Key criteria for choosing the most suitable include demonstrated use and testing under real-time clinical conditions, scope of terms, cost, and the administrative infrastructure to sustain and evolve the terminology. Likelihood of survival is also critical and was evaluated here by examining the diffusion pattern of each terminology set through bibliometric analysis. Each of the five sets had a unique diffusion pattern, with NANDA/NOC/NIC demonstrating the most extensive penetration and author network in the CINAHL literature examined from 1982 to 2006.