Abstract
The purpose of this study was to systematize nursing terminology in scientific terms by describing the way that visiting nurses expressed and described their own nursing practice.
The subjects were 25 visiting nurses in the Kansai region of Japan. Each nurse was asked to choose a patient of the day and to describe and discuss her activities during the visit in terms of nursing. The items covered were divided by the researchers into“label of the activity”, “reason for performing the activity” “aim of the activity”, “actual nursing procedure for the activity”, “labels of simultaneous activities”, “aims of simultaneous activities”, and “actual procedures for simultaneous activities”. The data gained through this process were analyzed to determine the nature of each item and the relationships among the items.
Because nursing is provided as one part of daily life for home health care patients, the terms used to describe nursing practice consisted of words used in daily life (for example, “greetings”).
Sometimes the terms used were colloquial expressions. Because of the limited time available to carry out a number of nursing tasks during one visit, one term included more than one nursing activity. In addition, because nurses need to collaborate with various specialists in both the medical and the health and welfare fields in order to care for their patients, nurses should use their terms that have the commonality with other fields.
