Adopting nursing health record standards.

The exploratory investigation described in this paper tried to identify and acknowledge the added value created by the adoption of nursing practice standards. It did so using a case study in a large Portuguese hospital. Following a literature review, five assumptions were proposed. Subsequently, a survey was developed and administered to a sample of nursing staff at the hospital in question. Our results confirmed all but our final assumption, leading to the conclusion that the adoption of standards is beneficial to nursing practice.