title: Medical and nursing diagnoses: a critical comparison.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Diagnostic systems exist in many disciplines. Strengths and weaknesses of such diagnostic systems vary considerably within and among disciplinary domains of the health sciences. The logical framework behind each diagnostic process involves identifying a condition, seeking causes, establishing a prognosis and a treatment. Notably, a clinical diagnosis is a judgment focused on the present, aiming to cluster events associated with a disease. Diagnostic judgment focuses on the past when it attempts to isolate possible causes, and towards the future when it indicates prognoses and treatments.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  The paper suggests ways to differentiate nursing diagnosis from medical diagnoses, discussing ontology and abductive reasoning for doctors and nurses.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The proposed logical framework has been applied to a nursing taxonomy-based diagnostic system in order to evaluate its strengths and weaknesses consistently with the epistemology of a diagnostic judgment.
authors.affiliation: Department of Cardiac, Thoracic and Vascular Sciences, University of Padova, Padova, Italy.
authors.forename: Daniele
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Chiffi
authors.forename: Renzo
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Zanotti
mesh_terms: D001290:Attitude; D015984:Causality; D002983:Clinical Competence; D003661:Decision Support Techniques; D006801:Humans; D007600:Judgment; D009733:Nursing Diagnosis / Q000379:methods*; D010820:Physicians; D011237:Predictive Value of Tests; D013850:Thinking
keywords: abduction; diagnosis; diagnostic reasoning; hypothesis; taxonomy