Mutual enhancement of diverse terminologies

The purpose of this study was to map the North American Nursing Diagnosis Association (NANDA) nursing diagnoses to the International Classification for Nursing Practice Version 1.0 (ICNP®) and to compare the resulting representations and relationships to those within SNOMED® Clinical Terms (CT). Independent reviewers reached agreement on 25 (i.e. 64%) of the 39 parent-child relationships identified via the mappings between NANDA entities. Other parent-child relationships were more questionable and are in need of further discussion. This work does not seek to promote one terminology over any other. Rather, this collaborative effort has the potential to mutually enhance all three terminologies involved in the study: ICNP®, SNOMED® CT and NANDA. In doing so it provides an example of the type of collaborative effort that is needed to facilitate the development of tools to support interoperability at a global level.