Administrative applications of nursing diagnosis.

Nursing diagnosis is not a panacea. It does not offer answers to all that ails nursing in the current health care environment. Implementation is hampered by poorly defined and confusing terms. Bedside practitioners are unable to see the value of what is perceived as merely adding more paperwork and moving them away from the patient's bedside. Nonetheless, nursing diagnosis offers a framework for the development of definitive data to address the benefit and effectiveness dimensions of cost-benefit questions. Such data are vitally needed if patient outcomes are to be, and to remain, central in the midst of the dramatic and fundamental changes impacting health care.