Developing a Data Dictionary for the Irish Minimum Data Set that Authentically Reflects the Nursing Contribution to Patient Care

Paper

Wednesday, 19 July 2006

This presentation is part of : Developing and Testing Instruments and Scales

Gerard W. Clinton, RPN, BSc, MSc, RNT¹, P. Anne Scott, PhD, RGN¹, Margaret (Pearl) Treacy, PhD, MSc, BA, RGN², Padraig MacNeela, PhD³, Abbey Hyde, BSocSc, MSocSc, PhD², Roisin Morris, MSc¹, Pamela Henry, MSc⁴, Melissa A. Corbally, MSc, BSc, (Hons)¹, Michelle M. Butler, PhD, MSc, BSc, RGN, RM², Jonathan Drennan, MEd, BSc, RGN, RPN, RNMH, RNT⁵, Kate E. Irving, PhD, BSc, RGN¹, and Anne Byrne, RGN, MSc⁶. (1) School of Nursing, Dublin City University, Dublin, Ireland, (2) School of Nursing, Midwifery and Health Systems, University College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland, (3) Department of Psychology, National University of Ireland, Galway, Galway, Ireland, (4) School of Nursing, DCU, Dublin, Ireland, (5) School of Nursing & Midwifery, University College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland, (6) School of Nursing and Midwifery, University College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland

Learning Objective #1: Recognise the importance of ensuring that standardised tools and their ancillary documents authentically reflect the language and practice of nurses for whom they are intended.
Learning Objective #2: Recognise steps in the development of such tools and documents to ensure they reflect the language and practice of nurses for whom they are intended.

Werley & Lang (1988, p7) define a minimum data set as: “A minimum set of items of information with uniform definitions and categories concerning the specific dimension of professional nursing which meets the information needs of multiple data users in the health care system.” In developing an Irish Nursing Minimum Data Set (INMDS) for multiple users, the team was cognisant of the need to facilitate common understanding across healthcare settings of precisely which phenomena individual data set items represent. This was addressed by the development of a Data Dictionary to describe the problems, interventions and activities that each item represented by providing definitions and examples from practice. However, it is important that such representations are both precise and authentic. The team sought to establish this balance between authenticity and accuracy by using sources from two main genres: classification systems (to facilitate common understanding with brevity and accuracy) and data from focus groups and documentary analysis conducted earlier in the study (to enhance authenticity through use of the vernacular language of Irish nursing). This paper describes the use of these genres in constructing data dictionary definitions and examples. This is done by taking a number of definitions and describing their development.
References

Werley, H.H. and Lang, N. (1988) Identification of the Nursing Minimum Data Set. Springer, New York.

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