Utilization of nursing diagnoses in Iowa Child Health Specialty Clinics.
OBJECTIVE
To determine nursing diagnoses utilization in the Iowa Child Health Specialty Clinics (CHSC).


METHODS
A review of charts of 631 children seen in CHSC's Integrated Evaluation and Planning Clinic (IEPC) and of 108 children served in the CHSC Home and Community Care (HCC) programs.


RESULTS
For the 21 patients in the HCC group, 12 (57%) had at least one documented nursing diagnosis. Forty-six different nursing diagnoses were documented, with a range of 2 to 8 nursing diagnoses (average 3.75) per patient. Of the 46 nursing diagnoses, 12 (26%) were exact matches, 25 (54%) were close matches, and 9 (20%) were no matches to NANDA. For the IEPC group, 126 children (46%) had at least one documented nursing diagnosis. Ninety different nursing diagnoses were used 157 times, with a range of 1 to 8 diagnoses (average 2.6) per patient. Nineteen (21%) different nursing diagnoses used 27 times were considered to be exact matches to NANDA diagnoses. Fifteen (17%) different diagnoses used 28 times were considered to be close NANDA matches. Fifty-six (62%) different nursing diagnoses used 102 times were considered to be no matches.


CONCLUSIONS
The documentation of nursing diagnoses for select groups of CHSC patients has provided information about the patient phenomena of concern addressed by CHSC nurses.
Sieleman
J
J
Waterloo Regional Office of Iowa Child Health Specialty Clinics, Iowa, USA.
D000293:Adolescent; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003151:Community Health Centers; D003152:Community Health Nursing / Q000379:methods*; D002658:Developmental Disabilities / Q000451:nursing*; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D007484:Iowa; D009731:Nursing Audit; D009733:Nursing Diagnosis / Q000145:classification* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D015403:Nursing Evaluation Research; D009737:Nursing Records