[Nursing diagnosis in acute care. An exploratory study at the Zürich University Hospital]

The purpose of the study presented here was twofold: one was the identification of nursing diagnoses in patients who were hospitalised in different departments of the University Hospital; the other was the identification of the comparative distribution of these nursing diagnoses over the different medically defined departments. The study was based on 927 lists of nursing diagnoses within which the patients ticked the relevance for, them according to their present state of health. The analysis of the data showed the large spectrum of nursing diagnoses with which clinical nurses can be confronted and the distribution of the diagnoses over different departments. The results also point to important relationships between different nursing diagnoses, thus having certain predictive value.