[To represent needs of nursing care using nursing diagnoses: potentials and restrictions of the NANDA classification and ICNP].

Nursing diagnoses represent individual reactions to existing or potential changes in one's state of health. They are result of a diagnostic process, which is part of the dynamic nursing care process in its whole. Thus, as a basis of nursing interventions diagnoses have to be proved continuously. The classification of the North American Nursing Diagnosis Association (NANDA) as well as the International Classification for Nursing Practice (ICNP) can be account to the international well-known classifications of nursing diagnoses. Comparing their structures, some fundamental differences between both classifications become obvious. While the NANDA classification represents a systematic structured body of nursing knowledge with regard to human health reactions patterns, the ICNP reflects a more comprehensive part of the nursing reality, since it also contains nursing interventions and outcomes. Until the latest changes by establishing the taxonomy II, NANDA diagnoses have primarily focused deficits. But in contrast to the diagnoses of the ICNP they also comprise etiological factors. To prove the applicability of both classifications to nursing practice, they have been applied to a case study of a female resident living in a nursing home. The results of analysis show that because of their different structures the NANDA classification and ICNP have their own possibilities and limitations in covering the resident's individual needs of nursing care. These characteristic potentials and restrictions have to be taken into account when one of the classification systems is going to be implemented into nursing practice.