Development of the Perioperative Nursing Data Set.

Nursing practice is a major component of health care. Yet, it remains undervalued and essentially invisible because little data exist to substantiate the influence of nurses on patient outcomes. The research-based Perioperative Nursing Data Set (PNDS), with an easily automated nomenclature capable of describing the specialty practice of perioperative nursing, was designed to fill this gap. Four domains (i.e., safety, physiologic response to surgery, patient and family behavioral response to surgery, health system) form the foundation of the PNDS. Each domain, with accompanying desired outcomes, nursing interventions, and nursing diagnoses, has reliability, content validity, and evidence of construct validity. The purpose of this article is to introduce the conceptual framework, taxonomy, and potential clinical applications of the PNDS.