Standardized Nursing Language in the Digital Era: Communication, Education and Clinical Implementation

Dear Colleagues,

In the rapidly evolving landscape of modern healthcare, the need for a standardized and precise nursing language has never been more critical. The digital transformation of health systems, driven by the widespread adoption of Electronic Health Records (EHRs) and the increasing use of data analytics, places new demands on the nursing profession. A unified terminology is not merely an academic exercise; it is a fundamental prerequisite for ensuring patient safety, enabling effective interprofessional communication, and harnessing the full potential of health data to improve care outcomes.

This Special Issue of Nursing Reports aims to bring together the latest research, innovative practices, and theoretical advancements in the field of standardized nursing language. We invite contributions that explore the development, implementation, and evaluation of nursing classifications—such as ICNP®, NANDA I, NIC, and NOC—across diverse clinical, educational, and policy contexts. We are particularly interested in work that addresses the intersection of standardized terminology with digital health technologies, including EHRs, clinical decision support systems, and artificial intelligence.

The scope of this issue encompasses multiple dimensions of nursing, including but not limited to:

• Clinical practice and patient safety: studies on the impact of standardized language on care quality, error reduction, and clinical outcomes;
• Education and workforce development: innovative pedagogical approaches to teaching nursing terminology and assessing competencies;
• Digital health and informatics: the role of standardized language in EHR design, data interoperability, and secondary use of nursing data;
• Implementation science: strategies, barriers, and facilitators for adopting nursing classifications in real-world settings;
• Interprofessional communication: the contribution of unified terminology to team-based care and care coordination;
• Global and cross-cultural perspectives: comparative studies on the use and adaptation of nursing languages across different healthcare systems.

With this initiative, we seek to stimulate reflection and knowledge production that reinforce nursing’s role as a leading force in the digital transformation of healthcare. We warmly invite nursing scholars, clinicians, educators, informaticians, and policymakers to contribute their work to this timely and impactful collection.

Dr. Grzegorz Józef Nowicki
Prof. Dr. Barbara Ślusarska
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• standardized nursing language
• nursing terminology
• ICNP
• NANDA-I
• nursing classifications
• electronic health records
• nursing informatics
• digital health
• interprofessional communication
• patient safety
• nursing education
• clinical decision support
• health data interoperability
• evidence-based practice