INTRODUCTION: What is SNOMED- CT?

The acronym SNOMED-CT stands for the Systematized Nomenclature of Medicine - Clinical Terms.  SNOMED-CT provides a common language that enables communication among providers and electronic health records, increasing the collaboration, consistency, and quality of patient care across different medical specialties for any given patient (Ware, 2013). The primary purpose of SNOMED-CT is to encode the meanings of healthcare information and support the effective recording of clinical data with the goal of improving patient care. This language is recognized throughout the United States and Internationally as the most comprehensive clinical terminology and has become an international standard for the coding of healthcare data (Nelson & Staggers, 2018,p. 377).  According to Nelson & Staggers (2018), SNOMED-CT is considered the most precise and comprehensive multilingual health terminology in the world. It is also the current national standard required for Stage 2 Meaningful Use for the designation of the patient problem list and public health reporting (NLM, n.d.).  SNOMED-CT is far from simple. Nineteen hierarchies define the initial concepts which are then further broken down into more precise ideas that result in specific clinical concepts which define a patients condition. SNOMED-CT has been scientifically validated and is available for use free of charge from the U.S. Department of Health. SNOMED-CT offers a practical application to nursing by assisting with clinical decision making and providing links to shared resources such as clinical pathways, care plans , and other resources that support patient care. 

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Check out these links for additional information

Websites

SNOMED International 

SNOMED-CT Overview

Articles

Development of the nursing problem list subset of SNOMED CT®

An Applied Evaluation of SNOMED CT as a Clinical Vocabulary for the Computerized Diagnosis and Problem List

Weekly Thought

I have enjoyed the assignments throughout this first week of the course. They have been challenging but also eye-opening. Nursing Informatics is a much broader field than I realized. The tools and technology we are being exposed to offer us innovative and creative ways to work with both staff and patients. I look forward to next weeks learning experiences.

References:

National Library of Medicine (NLM) (n.d.). Overview of SNOMED CT. Retrieved from https://www.nlm.nih.gov/healthit/snomedct/snomed_overview.html

Nelson, R., & Staggers, N. (2018). Health informatics: An interprofessional approach (2^nd Ed.). St. Louis, Missouri: Elsevier.

Ware, E. (2013).  SNOMED what it is and why it was added to stage 2 meaningful use. Wolters Kluwer Health Language Blog. Retrieved from http://blog.healthlanguage.com/SNOMED-What-it-is-and-Why-it-was-Added-to-Stage-2-Meaningful-Use