The nursing process is complex and consists of three principle components: assessment, problem identification, and problem management. Since the early 1990s, there has been an ongoing effort to develop and promote a standardized nursing language.
Until recently, good information from nursing documentation has been difficult to utilize in decision-making processes in areas such as the cost and quality of nursing care, resource allocation, effective research, and level of staffing. The documentation was inconsistent and nonstandardized, and it provided a poor assessment of the knowledge and skill that nursing brings to healthcare.
One basic component of any data collection process is a standardized language. Standardized language involves defining a series of terms or phrases that can be applied where there are many ways of saying the same thing. In the case of nursing, there was a need for a common language that addressed and linked the three components of nursing care data elements—diagnoses, interventions, and outcomes. In the case of the SNLs, three different sets of nomenclatures are needed.