Standards and Language

Health care, in general, and nursing, in particular, suffer from a "Tower of Babel" phenomenon where language used for the same data elements are not used consistently. In addition, much of nurses' work involves verbal traditions that never get recorded. The impact of this is that funding and health care decisions frequently fail to provide adequate resources for quality nursing care for all patients. Structuring and standardizing the language nurses use to provide patient care will help our profession collect data that demonstrates the value of quality nursing care for improved patient outcomes. The current state of standardized language development is an admirable and necessary step, but there remains a great deal of work to be done!