Nursing diagnoses in palliative home care

Objective: Describe the nursing diagnoses most often identified by a palliative home care team. Study design and methods: A descriptive study. The participants were a nursing team of palliative home care, composed by four nurses. The data were collected from twenty two patients and their families through structured observation, particularly from an observation grid constructed based on Palliative Care for Dignified Dying - International Classification for Nursing Practice (ICNP®) Catalogue. This grid included all nursing diagnosis provided by the International Council of Nurses for this area. The data collection was performed between days 1 and 31 August 2012. To data processing was created a database in Excel, with the possibility of adding other diagnoses observed. Results: The nursing diagnoses often identified in palliative home care team were: “fatigue,”“cachexy”, “knowledge about the medication regime, lack of”, “edema”, “skin integrity, compromised”, “family process, compromised” and “family coping, compromised”. Therefore four of the prevalent nursing diagnoses correspond to physiological needs and the remaining three correspond to needs of security, as defined by Maslow´s hierarchy adapted to palliative care. Conclusions: Nursing diagnosis activity is relevant to health information systems, specifically to nursing information systems. The nursing diagnosis gives visibility to nursing care and in this case the activity on palliative home care.