Documented nursing diagnoses for medical clinic patients

Abstract

This paper reports a descriptive study, based on nursing records, of nursing diagnoses documented three months after the implementation of the NANDA-I classification at the University of São Paulo's Hospital Universitário (HU-USP) and proposes outcomes and interventions for the 3 most frequent diagnoses. The convenience sample (34% of the month's admissions) consisted of 30 charts of patients admitted in the Medical Clinic in August of 2004 (60% female, average age 60.9±23.1 years, mean length of stay = 5.8±2.7 days). The diagnoses documented on the admission day were manually transcribed from the charts and analyzed according to their frequency. There were 144 diagnoses (31 categories), with an average of 4.8±4.0 diagnoses per patient (range = 1-10). The most frequent were: acute pain (66.7%), impaired tissue integrity (63.3%), ineffective airway clearance (43.3%), risk of impaired skin integrity (36.7%), and impaired skin integrity (33.3%). The proposed outcomes and interventions are presented.