Research on nursing languages

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Each semester, I try to determine how many of the Doctor of Nursing Practice students in my classes speak any nursing language. Many have never heard of the International Classification of Nursing Practice (ICNP), the International Council of Nursing's official language, developed over a decade ago and now being tested for its applicability in several sites and countries throughout the world. I always am surprised that these students are not aware of Nursing Minimum Data Set discussions throughout the discipline and the fact that, in addition to the ICNP, there are several languages approved for use by the American Nurses Association. And, yet, these languages are not being used in advanced practice. When I inquire beyond this first set of questions, I usually find out that these advanced practice nurses (APNs) are not bilingual and that they rather speak only medical language in their diagnoses, coding for reimbursement, and overall documentation. Furthermore, they indicate that there was no attention to nursing languages in the advanced practice education programs that they attended. As an educator, this issue is of great concern to me—but will be deferred to another editorial in another journal.

Throughout the development of the various nursing languages, there was considerable research to validate the terminology, both with nurse clinicians and scientists participating in the validity assessments. There is documentary literature to support this development in the scientific nursing literature.

Through my continuing questioning, I have now enticed two doctoral students to study the use of nursing languages in advanced practice. The literature review that they have thus far indicates minimal published research regarding APNs' use of nursing language or terminology in their practice. These reviews thus far have piqued my curiosity about research that are ongoing, which have not yet been published. I am anxious to learn of the continued research using nursing language to document nursing practice and would like to invite research papers on the topic for publication in a special future issue of Applied Nursing Research (ANR). We are particularly interested in research undertaken across countries, testing not only the application of the ICNP but also other languages. Manuscripts regarding cross-national projects as well as projects reporting on nursing language use in one country can be submitted as original articles for review by the ANR. If your research is preliminary, you can submit it to the Research Briefs section of the ANR; if your research is focused on instrument application from research to clinical practice, you can submit the manuscript to the Clinical Methods section. If you are an APN and looking for a research topic for a dissertation, I invite you to join the small group of researchers I am advising. We welcome your involvement and expertise to spread the word about the need for a common language to advance nursing's professional practice and science. We look forward to your submissions.