Nursing Terminology as a Means of Identifying Nursing Diagnoses

Abstract

Empirical identification of nursing diagnoses by collection of terms naming patient problems from a nursing perspective can be compared with both field studies of anthropologists depicting folk classifications of animals or plants and cognitive psychologists studying categories of the mind. This article purports to report on an attempt to transforming theoretical and methodological inspiration from anthropology and cognitive psychology into empirical practice in the field of nursing. Of particular interest to nursing is the hypothesis in antropology and cognitive psychology of the existence of a basic level of diagnostic categories challenging basic assumptions of traditional views about classification.

Results reported in this article do not demonstrate the existence of a basic level of diagnostic categories in nursing but provide usefull motivation for using nursing terminology from clinical practice as a means of identifying nursing diagnoses as an important supplement to nursing diagnoses derived from the terms of nursing theorists.

Keywords

Classifications basic level diagnostic categories nursing diagnoses prototype theory

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