Nursing Terminology Paper

Meaningful Use was introduced in 2009 in an effort to reform healthcare as well as improve quality, efficiency and safety (Hebda & Czar, 2013). Terminology standardization is one mandate which hospitals are attempting to comply with the meaningful use standards. According to Hebda & Czar (2013), standardized terminologies are “structured and controlled languages that have been developed according to terminology development guidelines and have been approved by an authoritative body” (p. 298). This is not an easy feat for hospitals for numerous systems have their own local terminology that they will need to map to standardized terminology, it is a challenge to determine which terminology to choose and multiple things must be considered such as data entry, presentation and retrieval (Hebda & Czar, 2013).

Nurses play a key role in the implementation of standardized terminologies for they are “central to care planning and communicating vital care information” (Tastan et al., 2014, p. 1162). Over the past four decades, nursing has been developing standardized nursing terminology (SNT). Using SNT improves communication among nurses and other providers, increases visibility of nursing interventions and outcomes, improves patient care, and facilitates greater adherence to standards of care (Schwirian, 2013).

The American Nurses
Together these terminologies have been mapped on SNOMED (Systemized Nomenclature of Medicine) (Tastan, et al., 2014). The SNOMED “is a globally recognized controlled healthcare vocabulary that provides a common language for electronic health application” (Hebda & Czar, 2013, p. 301). This program enables the ease of interoperability by providing consistency in capturing, sharing and aggregating data. For nursing interventions and outcomes cannot stand alone, so adding the NANDA diagnosis is an asset to the