Rationale for Quantification in Nursing Services Using the International Council of Nurses Nurse-Patient Summary.

This review provides evidence that new data from nurses meets criteria that explains variation in hospital charges, length of hospital stay and end results of hospital care compared with ICD data; that nurses' data can be used to evaluate assignments of nurses to patients; that new data properly distinguishes patients' human needs within ICD categories. These new data are derived from the professional literature indexed and synthesized by Henderson. It is proposed to adopt the ICN-NPSum to standardize quantification in nursing services.