Standardized Nursing language is designed to eliminate confusion and mitigate risks caused by errors or ambiguity. It has only been in recent years that the hospital has switched over to "plain language" when paging overhead. For example, a "code red" would be paged overhead. Now this happened to mean a fire alert but perhaps that did not mean fire in another organization which has the potential to lead to disaster. So now the overhead announcement states "fire alert on second floor....". No confusion there. That was an organizational example but the example is relevant as the standardization of nursing language means that we all talk the talk and understand the language fluently to perform our work more concisely.


Patient Care Data Set

There are two data sets that are accepted by the ANA. The first is the Nursing Minimum Data Set (NMDS) which helps to standardize how nursing data is collected. The second is the Nursing Management Minimum Data Set (NMMDS) which helps to structure for data elements that are specific to nursing (Nelson & Staggers, 2014).

NMDS- consists of required information such as patient information/demographics, Nursing assessment, patient diagnosis, expected outcomes, and nursing interventions

NMMDS- Made up of 18 nursing elements such as financial and nursing resources, environment, and decision making.

Ireland performed a study on an NMDS that was specific to mental health. The study showed that this particular NMDS showed reliability and validity so the set specific to mental health is an evidence based set. This supports that nurses increase the impact of healthcare delivery through documentation (Morris, Macneela, Scott, Treacy, Hyde, Matthew, & Byrne, 2010).

NMDS Comparison

References

Nelson, R. & Staggers, N. (2014) Health Informatics: An Interprofessional Approach. 

     Elsevier:St.Louis, Missouri

Morris, R., MacNeela, P., Scott, A., Treacy, M., Hyde, A., Matthews, A., & ... Byrne, A. (2010). The 

     Irish nursing minimum data set for mental health -- a valid and reliable tool for the collection of  

     standardised nursing data. Journal Of Clinical Nursing, 19(3-4), 359-367. 

     doi:10.1111/j.1365-2702.2009.02995.x