[Nursing minimum data sets (NMDS) - a literature review relating to objective and data elements]

In order to be able to follow the predicted changes in healthcare systems, there has long been a need for a unified database that could transparently compare nursing care data from different service providers. In Austria, a recommendation has been lacking thus far as to which nursing care data need to be documented as "basic data", and as a result of this, comparisons of nursing care data on a national basis have been hindered. The international development of Nursing Minimum Data Sets (NMDS) has demonstrated that nursing care data can be sufficiently compared.

The aim of the systematic literature review is to raise the current level of knowledge regarding NMDS and to develop a structured description of NMDS which, above all else, can document the recorded data elements and the associated objectives with the use of NMDS.

A total of seventy publications on the subject of NMDS were included in the literature overview. The analysis of the eight NMDS that were presented yielded six central objectives and six higher-level data elements. The identified objectives include: the description of the nursing care practice, distribution of the financial means, benchmarking, human resources planning, trend analyses, and quality assurance. The six data elements that were identified comprise operating data, demographic data, and the diagnoses, interventions, results (quality indicators), and intensity of nursing care (clinical data).

What emerged was that no clear association is present between the objectives and the data elements of the minimum nursing care datasets that were studied.