Kontakt 2009, 11(1):32-37 | DOI: 10.32725/kont.2009.005

Nursing diagnostics in context of evidence-based practiceNursing

Elena Gurková^*, Katarína Žiaková

Univerzita Komenského v Bratislave, Jesseniova lekárska fakulta v Martine, Ústav ošetrovateľstva, Slovenská republika

The evidence-based nursing practice is a methodological approach to the clinical practice, within the framework of which the following four components are considered in decisions made by a nurse - research results, values, patient preferences, clinical experience of the nurse and availability of tools within the scope of a particular clinical environment. The nursing diagnostics is an independent field of practice based on evidences, which calls for certain specific features of particular steps of the process, mainly in the first step - in the formulation of clinical problems. The clinical questions formulated in the first step can cover different areas of the clinical practice - diagnostics of nursing problems, their prediction, prognosis of their development as well as prevention. The target of the contribution is an analysis of the practice based on evidences in context of the nursing diagnostics and specification of particular steps of this process. The following methods were employed in the work - search for the literature, analysis, synthesis, comparison. The authors delimited the use of principles of the evidence-based practice in two areas - in the field of measuring instruments for objectivizing diagnostic characters or diagnoses and in the field of interpretation of the diagnostic characters. For the nursing diagnostics based on evidences, they propose, in addition to the standard format of the clinical question (PICO T), the use of a specific PCD format of the clinical question. The PCD format of the clinical problem may be employed in pedagogic and clinical nursing practice.

Keywords: evidence-based practice; nursing diagnostics; measuring instruments; interpretation

Received: February 9, 2009; Accepted: April 15, 2009; Published: May 27, 2009  Show citation