Representing Nursing Practice: Evaluating the Effectiveness of a Nursing Classification System

The purpose of this study was to examine the effectiveness of the International Classification for Nursing Practice (ICNP) in representing the contributions of nursing to health-care outcomes in Canada. The ICNP Beta Version was used to code retrospective nursing data extracted from patient records originating in acute care, in-patient mental health care, home care, and long-term-care practice settings. In spite of wide variation in documentation practices, ICNP achieved matches with the majority of nursing data. The study revealed areas for improvement in the ICNP Beta Version, specifically with regard to granularity related to the use of natural language terms and professional terms. Recommendations for further development through research in nursing-sensitive outcomes are discussed.