Nursing Interventions II: Selecting and Classifying the Nursing Interventions

Creating and executing a nursing diagnosis helps nurses plan care and guide patient, family, and community interventions. They are developed based on a patient's physical evaluation and support measuring the outcomes. It is not recommended to select random interventions throughout the planning process. Instead, consider the following six essential factors when choosing interventions:

1. Characteristics of the nursing diagnosis
2. Goals and expected outcomes
3. Evidence basis (e.g., research or proven practice guidelines) for the interventions
4. Feasibility of the interventions
5. Acceptability to the patient
6. Competence of the nurse

In addition, when considering treatment options, nurses should evaluate their patient's needs, priorities, and previous experiences. Such information will help the nurse choose the most appropriate intervention with the highest chance of achieving the desired result.

Nurses should examine resources such as nursing literature, standard protocols or recommendations, the Nursing Interventions Classification critical pathways, policy or procedure manuals, or textbooks when developing a care plan for a specific patient. Collaboration with other healthcare providers is also beneficial.

The Nursing Interventions Classification (NIC), developed by the Iowa Intervention Project, is a comprehensive, research-based, standardized classification of nurses' interventions. It is helpful for clinical documentation, care communication across settings, data integration across systems, effectiveness research, productivity measurement, competency evaluation, reimbursement, and curricular design. It is a collection of nurse interventions that provide standardization to facilitate communication of nursing care across all healthcare settings and aid in comparing results.

There are three levels in the NIC model: domains, classes, and interventions.

• • The seven domains of level one are basic physiological, complex physiological, behavioral, safety, family, health system, and community.
• • The second level contains 30 classes that provide clinically valuable categories for selecting interventions.
• • The third level has 542 interventions and any treatment types a nurse performs. These interventions are chosen based on clinical judgment and knowledge to improve patient outcomes.