Construction and validation of a taxonomy of nursing interventions

As the nursing profession evolves, it is becoming increasingly evident that standardized languages are needed for nursing diagnoses, nursing interventions, and nursing sensitive patient outcomes. Such classifications will make explicit what is now largely implicit about the nature of nursing practice. These classifications are needed so nursing can enter both the computer world of health information systems and national databases used for health policy planning. A large and diverse research team at the University of Iowa has been working since 1987 on the construction and validation of a classification of nursing interventions. In 1990, the National Center for Nursing Research (NCNR) funded the Iowa Intervention Project team with a three-year (R01NR02079) grant and in 1993 awarded a four-year continuation grant. In June 1992, Nursing Interventions Classification (NIC) (Iowa Intervention Project, 1992) was published, representing the work of the Iowa group to date. The purpose of this paper is to describe NIC and the on-going efforts at Iowa to develop a standardized language to describe nursing treatments.