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ANA NURSING INFORMATION AND DATA SET EVALUATION CENTER RECOGNIZES FIRST PRODUCTWASHINGTON, D.C. -- The American Nurses Association's (ANA) Nursing Information and Data Set Evaluation Center (NIDSECSM) today announced recognition of Pathways Care Manager, a software program from Atlanta-based HBOC that is used by nurses and other clinicians to document and manage clinical practice in the acute care setting. It is the first product NIDSECSM has recognized since the group was formed last year. The product includes software modules to support documentation of nursing assessments, patient problem lists, guidelines and clinical order entry, as well as a tool for creating predefined care designs, which are also known as care guides, critical paths or clinical protocols. "This first-ever recognition is a milestone for NIDSECSM and nursing," said Beverly L. Malone, PhD, RN, FAAN, president of ANA. "Pathways Care Manager meets all the criteria, including the use of nursing language and nursing classification systems that are supported by ANA." "Being the first product to meet NIDSECSMstandards is tremendous validation of Pathways Care Manager's role in professional practice," said HBOC vice president of nursing affairs Roy Simpson, RNC, FNAP, FAAN. "It is the most used clinical information system available today. NIDSECSM recognition clearly raises the bar for software developers to meet professional practice standards." Responding to the growing use of computerized information systems in health care and the need for professional standards in this area, the American Nurses Association (ANA) established the Nursing Information and Data Set Evaluation Center (NIDSECSM) in 1996. The Center has produced NIDSECSM Standards and Scoring Guidelines pertaining to the automated information systems that nurses use to document nursing care. For a fee, the Center evaluates information systems voluntarily submitted by developers against the NIDSECSM standards. The NIDSECSM standards evaluate the completeness, accuracy, and appropriateness of four dimensions of nursing data sets and the systems that contain them: 1) nomenclature; 2) clinical content; 3) clinical data repository (how the data are stored and made accessible for retrieval); and 4) general system characteristics. A "data set" consists of a set of terms provided to clinicians for recording assessments, diagnoses, goals, interventions, and documentation on the plan of care and outcomes. NIDSECSM is the only group that has developed standards related to nursing data and information systems. NIDSECSM was proposed by a joint task force appointed by the ANA Congress of Nursing Practice Steering Committee on Databases to Support Clinical Nursing Practice and the ANA Congress of Nursing Practice Committee on Nursing Practice Standards and Guidelines. For further information on NIDSECSM, contact Carol J. Bickford, MS, RN, C, senior policy fellow, ANA Department of Nursing Practice, at 202-651-7060 or cbickfor@ana.org. To obtain the NIDSECSM Standards and Scoring Guidelines, ($12.00 for members of State Nurses Associations, $12.50 for non-members) contact ANA Publications at 1-800-637-0323. For information on obtaining the NIDSECSM Application Packet, ($100.00) contact Yvonne Humes in the ANA Department of Nursing Practice at 202-651-7070 or yhumes@ana.org.
The American Nurses Association is the only full-service professional organization representing the nation's 2.6 million Registered Nurses through its 53 constituent associations. ANA advances the nursing profession by fostering high standards of nursing practice, promoting the economic and general welfare of nurses in the workplace, projecting a positive and realistic view of nursing, and by lobbying the Congress and regulatory agencies on health care issues affecting nurses and the public. HBOC is the nation's largest healthcare information systems vendor. It delivers enterprisewide patient care, clinical, financial and strategic management software solutions, as well as networking technologies, electronic commerce, outsourcing, and other services to healthcare organizations throughout the world.
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