ICNP and Telematic Applications for Nurses in Europe : The Telenurse Experience

International Classification for Nursing Practice (ICNP) functions as a common language for nursing in Europe. It is developed as a common nomenclature and classification system, reflecting the specific clinical realities of nursing practice. Telenurse promotes the use of ICNP in Europe according to a double strategy involving the following approaches; 1) organisation of dissemination conferences on a European level and dissemination meetings on a national level. 2. Building of simple demonstrators illustrating possible real uses of ICNP in shared electronic patient records. Telenurse has focused on two aspects of the use of ICNP in electronic records. Firstly, entry of ICNP data in relation to daily systematic documentation of nursing care and secondly, statistical analysis of ICNP data extracted from the electronic patient records in relation to the development of clinical quality and resource management. In relation to the DataIn phase Telenurse spans both streams within the group of projects concerned with electronic patient records, viz. the stream concerned with the architecture of electronic patient records and the stream concerned with the architecture of terminology's. In relation to the DataOut phase the small scale demonstrators of electronic patient records have been equipped with data extraction mechanisms for clinical databases. These developments have been supplemented by software showing how the results of the analysis of data stored in the databases can be fed back to clinical practice using electronic means.