PURPOSE
To identify perceived importance and performance frequency of nursing interventions with nursing activities of 5 nursing interventions from the physiological domains of NIC used in the home health care nursing. METHOD: Five nursing interventions in the physiological domain of NIC were selected based on the previous finding. Data were collected from 85 nurses working in 54 home health care centers between August and October, 2004 using mailing survey(return rates : 41.5%). The questionnaire consisted of 96 nursing activities in 5 interventions with definitions, asking perceived importance and performance frequency of them. RESULT: Skin surveillance was perceived as the most important(3.52+/-0.36) intervention and also performed most frequently(4.43+/-0.45). All the nursing activities in skin surveillance appeared to be used frequently, which was rated over 4 out of 5 point Likert, while only 4 nursing activities in exercise therapy: joint mobility did. Correlations between perceived importance and performance frequency of 5 interventions were all significant (r=0.591-0.718, p=0.000). CONCLUSION: Identifying the use of particular interventions and nursing activities will help nurses simplify documentations and to deliver better care to the patients in home health care nursing.

The purpose of the study was to investigate the characteristics of the clients registered in the department of home health care nursing in a hospital and to analyze nursing intervention activities recorded in charts by application of Nursing Intervention Classification (NIC) system. For the descriptive survey study, data were collected by reviewing charts of 572 home health care clients between May, 1997 and July, 2000 at K hospital in Seoul. The average age of the clients was 66 years and the number of clients in their 70s ranked first with 28.2 percent(158 people). The mean length of home care service was 47 days with the highest frequency of less than four weeks (56 %). With regard to medical diagnosis, cancer showed the highest frequency (48%, 271 people), followed by cerebrovascular disease (19%), and pulmonary disease (6.9%). According to analysis of nursing interventions by the NIC system, the most frequently used nursing interventions in level 1 were interventions in the Physiological: Complex domain which were used 3,663 times (33%) among 11,107 total interventions. The Safety domain was the second most frequently used intervention, followed by the Physiological: Basic, and the Behavioral domains. In level 2, the Risk Management class was the most frequently used interventions with 3,108 interventions (27.9%), followed by Drug Management, and Tissue Perfusion Management classes. In level 3 interventions, Vital Sign Monitoring was the most frequently used intervention, 569 times (5.1%), followed by Health Screening, and Neurological Monitoring interventions. In sum, half of the clients in the study had cancer and were in their 70s. The most frequent reason for ending home care was death (40%), followed by readmission (28%). These findings represent clients with severe conditions referred to the home care nursing department as it was a University teaching hospital. Further research on analyzing nursing interventions performed in each institution needs to be conducted to develop a standardized list of nursing interventions to use in home health care settings.

This study examines that North American Nursing Diagnosis Association(NANDA) and Home Health Care Classification(HHCC) is appropriate to classify home health care client's nursing problems and suggests a modified nursing diagnosis classification system. Two hundred and forty-nine clients' records at a general hospital were reviewed and nursing problems were diagnosed according to each classification system. Results of this study are as follows. The major client's medical diagnosis are pregnancy, childbirth and puerperium, malignant neoplasm, and benign neoplasm. Of four hundred and sixty-three nursing problems, all nursing problems made a diagnos according to HHCC, while three hundred and eighty-five made a diagnosis according to NANDA. The HHCC diagnosis included 78 more nursing problems than NANDA. The discrepancy in the results may indicate a significant advantage to HHCC diagnosis because HHCC nomenclature was created empirically from hard data. However, this may be due to limitations in the data collection method so determination of which classification system is more useful is difficult to judge. However, nursing components of the HHCC are more concrete and clearer than human response patterns of the NANDA. Also the HHCC facilitates the documentation of patient care by computer, while using a conceptual framework consisting of 20 Care Components based on the nursing process: assessment, diagnosis, outcome identification, planning, implementation and evaluation. Accordingly, the practical application of HHCC is more useful than NANDA. Limitations of this study include a retrospective data collecting method and universality of samples. Further research for various samples that use prospective data collection method is recommended.