Interventions And Outcomes: Daily Nursing Practice Essay

As nurses we have all heard of nursing interventions. In nursing school we are taught how to make nursing care plans that are specific to each patient and include the appropriate interventions needed to provide quality care. It is not any different now that we are practicing nurses. Every day we use nursing care plans and make changes to the patient’s plan of care as necessary. This is to ensure patient safety, quality care, and improved patient outcomes.
So what exactly is an intervention? The Center for Nursing Classification & Clinical Effectiveness website defines an intervention as "any treatment, based upon clinical judgment and knowledge, that a nurse performs to enhance patient/client outcomes" (University of Iowa, Nursing Interventions Classification, 2008). Individual nurses use a limited number of interventions that reflect their specialties. They then become experts in the interventions that they commonly use (University of Iowa, Nursing Interventions Classification, 2008).
I have recently learned that there are 542 nursing intervention labels and definitions. There is a comprehensive and standardized classification of interventions performed by nurses called the Nursing Interventions Classification (NIC). The NIC is research-based. It is useful for many things in the healthcare setting. These uses include clinical documentation, communication, integration of data, effective research, productivity measurement, competency evaluation, reimbursement, and curricular design. These classifications of interventions include all that are done by the nurses for the patients, including direct and indirect patient care as well interventions that are both independent and collaborative. NIC is used by nurses in every setting and specialty. Although NIC is meant to describe the domain of nursing, other care givers can use these to describe their treatments, as long as it is within their scope of practice (University of Iowa, Nursing Interventions Classification,...