Language for research and practice

Abstract

There is growing international interest and effort in the development of standard labels and definitions for nursing concepts. The aims of such work are diverse (from supporting electronic communications, through to making explicit nursing's contribution to healthcare and outcomes), and there is increasing recognition that one standard may not be possible: there may need to be different forms of nursing language for different purposes. Researchers will at different times use language across the whole spectrum from the words spoken by patients and clients, to formal, defined classifications. One of the concerns that nurses have, and one of the difficulties facing those in the field, is that formal, standardised language may never capture the complexity and diversity of nursing. In addition, there is a recognition that nursing shares elements of clinical language with other healthcare professions. Unidisciplinary developments need to take account of compatibility of structures and the definition of concepts shared with other clinical languages. The agenda for the nursing research and informatics communities is to collaborate in this work so that labels, defining characteristics and measurement tools truly reflect the art and science of nursing and so that appropriate standard languages are developed for the different requirements of nursing.