The arrival of the EHR has made the use of a common nursing language a requirement.  Having a standardized nursing language will allow for improved communication not only between nurses, but other health team providers (Rutherford, 2008).  With the now mandated use of the EHR in many countries, this seems a perfect time to integrate this language into the EHR.  By standardizing nursing technologies, not only would communication improve, but the vital components of nursing care would be known and recognized.  These include diagnoses, interventions, and outcomes (Tastan et al., 2014).  The use of a consistent language will improve patient outcomes, enrich data collection and allow for the stricter adherence to nursing standards of care.  This creation has also been used in nursing education to develop and evaluate nursing competencies (Rutherford, 2008).

            The use of the Nursing Intervention Classification (NIC) and the Nursing Outcomes Classification (NOC) are consistent arrangement and grouping of patient interventions and outcomes, and examples of this standardized nursing language (Moorhead, Johnson, Maas, Swanson, 2013).    The NIC and NOC were developed as companion languages.  Recognized by the American Nurses Association (ANA), the NIC consists of 554 interventions and the NOC, 490 outcomes. Both of these classification systems are recognized by many other countries and translation to the individual languages continues.

References

Moorhead, S., Johnson, M., & Maas, M. (2013). Nursing outcomes 
     classification (NOC) (5th ed.) (E. Swanson, Ed.). St. Louis, MO:
     Elsevier. 

Rutherford, M. A. (2008). Standardized nursing language: What does it mean for
     nursing practice? The Online Journal of Issues in Nursing, 13(1).
     http://dx.doi.org/10.3912/OJIN.Vol13No01PPT05 

Tastan, S., Finch, G. C.F., Lopez, G. M., Stifter, J., McKinney, D., Fahey, L.,
     . . . Wilkie, D. J. (2014). Evidence for the existing american nurses
     association-recognized standardized nursing terminologies: A systematic
     review. International Journal of Nursing Studies, 51, 1160-1170.
     http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijnurstu.2013.12.004