Ireland. The Healthcare Informatics Society of Ireland held its annual conference last November at Saggart, west of Dublin. The society, which represents informatics interests across the Irish healthcare system, includes the Nursing Informatics Group, a 100-strong body. The principal theme of the conference was the use of information technologies as a strategic element in integrated health care. Approximately half of the papers were presented by nurses. ACENDIO was represented at the conference by Fintan Sheeran, who manned an ACENDIO poster presentation.

                   A local nursing informatics initiative is in early stages of development at the Mater Misericordiae Hospital, Dublin, under the leadership of Rosaleen Murnane. In January 2001, a seminar, organized by UK/Ireland ACENDIO, was held at this same hospital. More than 50 nurses from throughout the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland attended the day-long program and judged it to be a great success. June Clark provided a most interesting introduction to the key concepts inherent in nursing diagnosis. This was followed by a presentation on standardization by Anne Casey and a discussion of nursing classification systems by Nico Oud. The afternoon was practical, with Alex Westbrook providing attendees with an insight into her work at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, London, and Rosaleen Murnane providing a description of 10 years of nursing informatics at Mater Misericordiae Hospital. The day concluded with a Q&A session.

                       Portugal. An informal meeting of the nursing group looking at the International Standards Organization's (ISO) work on "integration of a reference terminology model for nursing" was held in Portugal prior to the 5th and last Telenurse ID conference. It is expected that the activity on this work will be based on the European Nursing Terminology PreStandard (Health Informatics--System of Concepts to Support Nursing) that was accepted at a meeting of the working group in December 2000.

The main objective of the TeleNurse ID ENTITY (Integration and Demonstration of European Nursing Terminology in Information Technology) project was to strengthen and enlarge the European consensus on the use of the International Classification of Nursing Practice (ICNP). The 5th and final Telenurse ID Conference was held in Coimbra, Portugal, in November 2000. Participants from 22 countries discussed the translation, dissemination, and testing of the ICNP. Telenurse consortium partners were joined by nurses from countries as far afield as Japan and Korea, and also by representatives from national nurses associations who had undertaken peer reviews of translations of ICNP into many languages.

Germany. From 22-24 March, 2001, the ACENDIO third European Conference was held in Berlin. A special German preconference was organized around the theme of the issues regarding nursing classification--standardization and language. About 150 German-speaking colleagues attended this session and spoke highly of it.

William Goossen, Hanneke van Maanen, and Iris Mamier presented informative keynotes and papers. Cristoph Abderhalden spoke about the ICIDH-2, the perspective and meaning for nursing. The ICIDH (International Classification of Impairments, Disabilities & Handicaps, 1980) is an official WHO classification; the second version is expected to publish in 2001. This was followed by presentations by Peter Konig about the development of nursing language in Germany, Anne Berthou about the development of the Nursing Data Project in Switzerland, and Silvia Kuhne-Ponesch about the Austrian law regulating nursing diagnoses/process. At the end, Matthias Hinz and Frank Dorre spoke about the ICNP and the German-speaking User ICNP Group.

                   In the evening of the first day the opening ceremony was chaired by ACENDIO president, June Clark, and short presentations were given by representatives from the German Ministry of Health and the Municipality of Berlin, and the three main German Nursing Organizations. In the opening keynote, George Evers argued that the game of naming nursing and nursing search for evidence-based practice is being practiced on a larger and larger scale during the last few decades. He hoped that during the third ACENDIIO conference all participants would be able to share experience in naming nursing across cultural and language barriers and to search for empirical evidence or scientific principles to guide and improve the delivery of nursing service to the public in Europe.

The main conference, held over the next 2 days, was attended by 385 participants from 28 countries. In total, there were 8 keynote addresses, 52 presentations, 4 workshops, and 24 poster presentations. It is impossible to describe in detail all the interesting discussions, presentations, and meetings during this very successful conference. A few, however, deserve mentioning, such as the workshop on introduction to nursing terminology for newcomers given by Anne Casey, in which she explained in simple terms what is meant by nursing terminology. Another was the keynote by Derek Hoy about developing nursing's professional language, its purposes, and evaluation. Margareta Ehnfors spoke about the ICNP evaluation and application, and Anne Casey updated the attendees on international developments regarding nursing terminology and standards. Those interested in more detail can purchase the 320-page proceedings of this conference through Nico Oud, Hakfort 621, 1102 LA Amsterdam, the Netherlands, for $20 + postage (Fax ++ 31 20 4090550 or e-mail nico.oud@freeler.nl).

The conference provided a good overview of what is going on in Europe, and ACENDIO facilitated the opportunity for professional nurses to learn about, influence, and participate in the development of a common language, terminologies, and classifications, and to share knowledge about the developments in this area. It provided an excellent network for nurses from the different European and other) countries to promote and advance a common language to describe the practice of nursing. The fourth biennial conference will be in Paris, France, and will focus on making nursing more visible by showing and communicating the use of classifications and the results of nursing data collection as a means for improving nursing practice.

Brasil

                      The translation into Brasilian Portuguese of the 2001-2001 version of NANDA Nursing Diagnosis: Definitions and Classification was concluded in May and is expected to be available to Brazilian nurses in July. The 1999-2000 edition sold out and nurses are looking for this new edition. The revisions of the translation of Taxonomy I nursing diagnoses, as well as the translation of the new diagnoses and the structure of Taxonomy II, was done by Jeanne Liliane Marlene Michel, MSN, RN, and supervised by Alba Lucia Botura Leite de Barros, PhD, RN, from the department of Nursing of Universidade Federal de Sao Paulo. For further information, please contact Jeanne@denf.epm.br or barrosalba@dhsp.epm.br

Compiled by Alba de Barros, PhD, RN
Sao Paulo, Brasil