Nursing interventions classification in systematized nomenclature of medicine clinical terms: A cross-mapping validation

The Systemized Nomenclature of Medical Clinical Terms, or SNOMED-CT, was developed to create a comprehensive clinical healthcare reference terminology. Standardized nursing language concepts and terminologies recognized by the American Nurses Association have been added to SNOMED-CT and include the NANDA's Taxonomy II, NIC, NOC, the Omaha System, and CCC. The relationship link between terminologies and SNOMED-CT is provided in a mapping table, which identifies the source terminology. The purpose of this study is to examine the validity of the cross-mapping between the source system (NIC) and the target system (SNOMED-CT) using the methodology developed by Lu and colleagues to detect misassigned concepts. Knowledge representation concepts in the NIC and SNOMED-CT systems were compared using expert human judgment. Of 514 NIC concepts, 14 (2.7%) were identified as misassigned in SNOMED-CT. Two inappropriate representations of concepts were discovered in NIC. Results and recommendations were given to NIC and to SNOMED-CT.