Aim: Develop a compositional terminology model for nursing orders that would conform to the existing standard health level seven (HL7) messaging standard for clinical orders. Develop and evaluate the set of attributes needed for a pre-coordinated concept for a single nursing order, using a replicable three-step modeling process.
Results: A terminology model for nursing orders was developed using empirical data. The model was validated against nursing research and standards literature, and evaluated using 609 nursing orders that were successfully mapped to the structure. The representative services came from 20 Intermountain Health Care (IHC) hospitals, demonstrating the generalizability of the model and its attributes across many care settings.