ICNP ®: a standardized terminology to describe professional nursing practice.

As a resultant of the activity of attributing meaning to the world of nursing, we have, throughout our history, not only elaborated, but also systematically communicated a specific body of knowledge, applicable to any of the fields of professional practice – teaching, healthcare provision, research and management/ administration of nursing care. For this specific body of knowledge to take shape, the concepts that represent the phenomena of nursing’s field of interest are in a continuous process of identification and definition. Based on these concepts, standardized language systems, i.e., structures that organize the terms or expressions accepted by nurses to describe assessments, interventions and outcomes pertinent to nursing care, are in development(1). The International Classification for Nursing Practice (ICNP®) is one such standardized language systems. Its construction, an ongoing process, can be considered recent. When considered as of 1989, year in which the International Council of Nurses (ICN) approved the resolution that determined its elaboration, the classification has existed for 27 years. However, it can be considered even more recent (20 years) if we recall that its first version, the Alpha version, was launched in 1996. The ICN refers to the ICNP® as a standardized terminology that names, classifies and links phenomena that describe the very elements of professional practice: what nursing does (nursing interventions), relative to the assessment of certain human and social needs (nursing diagnoses), to produce nursingsensitive patient outcomes (nursing outcomes)(2). Thus, many efforts are being spend to develop a classification system that allows for the description and comparison of nursing data on a local, regional, national and international scale. The greater goal is to facilitate the representation of the domain of nursing professional practice at a global scale and at all levels of information support, based on data to be used in nursing care provision, management/administration, education and research. A notable fact in the evolution of ICNP® was the approval, in December 2008, of its inclusion in the World Health Organization (WHO) Family of International Classifications as a Related Classification. This fact marked the insertion of an essential and complementary part of professional health services in the WHO Family of International Classifications: the domain of nursing(3). Since the Alpha version, and considering the Beta and Beta 2 versions as one, given that the second was much more an editorial review of the first than an actual new version of the terminology, there have been eight versions of the ICNP® published up to date. In this evolutionary, ongoing process, since 2009, a new version of the ICNP® has been launched every two years.