Nursing Interventions Classification (NIC): Development and Use

Much of health care is nursing care. There are about 2.2 million Registered Nurses in the United States and approximately 4.5 million nurses worldwide (AJN, 1994, Leininger, 1990). As the largest group of health care professionals, nurses work in a variety of places and have a variety of roles. Although nursing care is crucial to the welfare of health care recipients, the impact of nursing care is nearly invisible and basic questions as to the contributions of nurses remain. What is it that nurses do? Do these actions of nurses make a difference to the quality of care received? Could the increased use of particular nursing actions result in the prevention of some medical conditions, the reduction of complications, or the enhancement of health and wellbeing? Are some nursing actions just as effective but less costly than tne actions of other health providers? With the advent of computerized health care information systems and the increased use of large data sets for the study of health care effectiveness, these questions are more timely than ever. A classification of interventions performed by nurses is essential to the systematic documentation and study of nursing care.