ICNP (International Classification for Nursing Practice)

The ICNP (International Classification for Nursing Practice) is a nursing classification being developed by the International Council of Nurses (ICN) in Geneva, Switzerland. The ICNP is a unified nursing language system. It is also a compositional terminology that facilitates the development of new vocabularies and cross-mapping existing vocabularies in order to enable nurses to describe and report their practice in a systematic way based on agreed terminology or dictionary of terms. The International Council of Nurses has released ICNP Alpha and Beta versions. Here is a link that would provide you with detailed information about ICNP and its versions, International Classification for Nursing Practice.

The ICNP composed of three dimensions:

                             I.   Nursing phenomena ( nursing diagnosis)

                          II.    Nursing actions (nursing intervention)

                        III.    Nursing outcomes

ICNP Vision

ICNP is an integral part of the global information infrastructure informing health care practice and policy to improve patient care worldwide.

Why Use ICNP?

The ICNP serve as a major force to articulate nursing’s contribution to health and healthcare globally in addition to promoting harmonization with other used classifications and the work of standardization groups in health and nursing. The objectives of the ICNP, as set out in the initial ICN publication, are:

1) To establish a common language for describing nursing practice in order to improve communication among nurses and between nurses and others.

 2) To describe the nursing care of people (individuals, families, and communities) in a variety of settings, both institutional and non-institutional.

 3) To enable comparison of nursing data across clinical populations, settings, geographic areas, and time.

4) To demonstrate or project trends in the provision of nursing treatments and care and the allocation of resources to patients according to their needs based on nursing diagnoses.

5) To stimulate nursing research through links to data available in nursing information systems and health information systems.

6) To provide data about nursing practice in order to influence health policymaking.

An International Classification of Nursing Practice (ICNP) is needed to support the processes of nursing practice since it makes a significant contribution to the acquisition of data about healthcare delivery, and to advance the knowledge necessary for cost-effective delivery of quality nursing care.

References

Clark, J & Lang, N. (1992). Nursing’s next advance: an internal classification for nursing practice. International Nursing Review. 39(4). 128.

Coenen, A. (2003). The International Classification for Nursing Practice (ICNP®) Programme: Advancing a Unifying Framework for Nursing. The Online Journal of Issues in Nursing. 8(2).

Hyun, S. (2002). Cross-mapping the ICNP with NANDA , HHCC, Omaha system and NIC for unified nursing language system development. International Nursing Review. 49(2). 99-110.

Warren, J. J. & Coenen, A. (1998). International Classification for Nursing Practice (ICNP) Most-frequently Asked Questions. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association. 5(4). 335-336.