RESUMO
AIMS: (1) To identify and analyse diagnoses documented by nurses in Portugal within the scope of universal self-care requisites; (2) to determine the main problems with nursing diagnoses syntaxes for semantic interoperability purposes; and (3) to suggest unified nursing diagnoses syntaxes within the scope of universal self-care requisites. BACKGROUND/INTRODUCTION: Ageing societies and the increase in chronic diseases have led to significant concern regarding individuals' dependence to ensure self-care. ICNP is widely used by Portuguese nurses in electronic health records for documentation of nursing diagnoses and interventions. METHODS: A qualitative study using inductive content analysis and focus group: 1. nursing e-documentation content analysis and 2. focus group to explore implicit criteria or insights from content analysis results. RESULTS: From a corpus of analysis with 1793 nursing diagnoses, 432 nursing diagnoses centred on universal self-care requisites emerged from the content analysis. One hundred ten nursing diagnoses resulted from the application of new encoding criteria that emerged after a focus group meeting. CONCLUSION: Results reveal that nursing diagnoses related to universal self-care requisites can emphasize the impairment or potentialities of the individuals performing self-care. It also shows a lack of consensus on nominating the nursing diagnoses of people with a deficit in universal self-care requisites, resulting in different diagnoses to express the same needs. IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING PRACTICE: Representation of most relevant nursing diagnoses within the scope of universal self-care requisites. IMPLICATIONS FOR HEALTH POLICY: Incorporating standardized language into electronic health records is not enough for improving quality and continuity of care and semantic interoperability achievement. Electronic health records need to work with a nursing ontology in the backend to meet these requirements.