No more NANDA diagnoses?

Nursing Students General Students

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One of the chief nurses on my med surge floor told us yesterday that they are doing away with the NANDA diagnoses. This is taking away from our profession, yet again. Correct?

Why are they taking these away? I know we can still have the diagnoses in our heads as we are writing care plans, but I don't understand why they're doing this. Can anyone clarify for me?

thank you

Specializes in ICU, ER, HH, NICU, now FNP.

Ok - I'm going to go someplace else with the therapeutic touch - It should be seperate from nursing. It has it's merits I am sure, and there is good science to support it, but honestly - can't it PLEASE be a seperate thing so the rest of us can keep it simple? Keep nursing, nursing. Not everything else.

Specializes in med/surg, telemetry, IV therapy, mgmt.

With regard to using pig latin. . .NANDA is trying to satisfy two groups: the nurses and the computer programmers. They are held back by what computers are able to accomplish in working with contextualized English as well as what is going to satisfy the needs of the nursing profession. Until this context problem can be solved by programmers, then users of NANDA are, unfortunately, stuck with using the words available in the program. Nursing schools and organizations that don't computer code their care plans are free to use other methods of constructing and wording of their care plans. Why they would continue to insist on using NANDA I have no answer for. You'd have to ask them.

Specializes in ICU, ER, HH, NICU, now FNP.

I have programming experience - the language of NANDA is just not justified in that sense. It was developed by nurses looking for "their own" language, not by programmers. Computers will receive whatever it is humans feed them.

The explanation I have always gotten when I asked why the language persists is "because thats the way it has always been done".

3 generations of cooks cut the tip off of the pot roast and never bothered to ask why. The youngest finally questioned the oldest after many years of this tradition and was told "Because it didn't fit in the small roasting pan I had" LOL

If we don't question and we don't ask and we don't change things to suit our needs today, then we are throwing away the proverbial tip of the pot roast. I wonder how many pounds of meat that is!

It was standardized language more than computer language that was behind the NANDA development. Computers are faster and more flexible than ever, the medical industry as a whole is (at LEAST) 10-20 years behind in info technology, but that's a whole OTHER thread.

Specializes in Emergency & Trauma/Adult ICU.
But billing wouldnt be done on NANDA anything - ever.

It is done in ICD-9 or 10 language which is wirtten by the AMA. And there is no E code for altered energy field! LOL

(Nor, I suspect, will there ever be)

Bingo. Has nothing to do with the merits or lack of ... of altered energy field or any other nursing dx that NANDA or anyone else dreams up. It is simply reality that medical billing (and, you could argue, therefore medical practice) runs on a standardized code of medical diagnosis & treatment. Nurses can use whatever language they want to develop plans of care -- language currently used in NANDA dx, binary code, or ancient Sanskrit -- it doesn't matter to anyone outside of nursing academia. And this is the problem with the time & energy devoted to nursing diagnoses - they are separate from the patient care from the rest of the treatment team including medicine, physical therapy, occupational therapy, etc. etc. etc.

Specializes in med/surg, telemetry, IV therapy, mgmt.
and there is no e-code for altered energy field!

and, you're never going to find one. icd-9-cm and icd-10-cm codes are medical diagnosis codes. fyi. . .e-codes are used to describe the external causes of injury or poisoning. they are meant to be used in addition to the medical diagnosis codes. therapeutic touch would be classified as a treatment, not as a condition, injury or poisoning. when i had to leave clinical nursing i trained and worked as a medical coder and am currently studying to get an rhit in health information management which includes knowledge of medical coding.
Specializes in ICU, ER, HH, NICU, now FNP.

Great - then Therapeutic touch can be billed for by TT providers just as chiro is billed by chiro and that way it can be left out of nursing :)

Semantics aside - the point I was making is - why are we as nurses including things in nursing that can't be included in medicine? That HINDERS communication, it does not foster it. It alienates "us" from "them" thereby creating a great divide. What is the purpose in that?

Specializes in Trauma.

My last day of med surg clinical which was yesterday, I asked my clinical professor about NANDA. I asked her why she didn't focus on care maps and nursing diagnoses like we are learning in school. Her reply to me was pretty close to this. It seems as though there is a trend in your universities teachings. What I mean by that is you are not being taught to think critically. Ie. Why is this happening in the body and so on. In reality, you are not going to utilize the nursing diagnoses when you begin working in the real world. However, some hospitals MAY require you too. But in my experience, not many hospitals are using them anymore. As long as you know in your head that this patient is at risk for infection or risk for altered bowel, you will know what step to take next. It's the critical thinking that needs to become second nature to you as an RN. Nursing is critically based and in time, you will be come a master at it.

Specializes in Critical Care.
With regard to using pig latin. . .NANDA is trying to satisfy two groups: the nurses and the computer programmers. They are held back by what computers are able to accomplish in working with contextualized English as well as what is going to satisfy the needs of the nursing profession. Until this context problem can be solved by programmers, then users of NANDA are, unfortunately, stuck with using the words available in the program. Nursing schools and organizations that don't computer code their care plans are free to use other methods of constructing and wording of their care plans. Why they would continue to insist on using NANDA I have no answer for. You'd have to ask them.

I completely disagree on one point. We can make computers do practically anything we want with langauge. And, we have.

The obtuse-ness of NANDA was created, as many of its believers attest, to create a 'nursing language'. The semantics of this has to do with creating our own 'body of knowledge' and has nothing to do with ineffective programming.

~faith,

Timothy.

Specializes in Nephrology, Cardiology, ER, ICU.

And then the question becomes - do we need a nursing language? Bottom line from a billing perspective is that if its not billable, ???? NANDA has outlived its usefulness, as has NIC/NOC (I thought this was some kind of joke before I went back for my BSN - lol). As nurses, we must use the language of medicine because that is what we do!

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