Accuracy in inference of nursing diagnoses in heart failure patients.

Unlabelled: Heart failure (HF) is a common cause of hospitalization and requires accuracy in clinical judgment and appropriate nursing diagnoses.

Objective: to determine the accuracy of nursing diagnoses of fatigue, intolerance to activity and decreased cardiac output in hospitalized HF patients.

Method: descriptive study applied to nurses with experience in NANDA-I and/or HF nursing diagnoses. Evaluation and accuracy were determined by calculating efficacy (E), false negative (FN), false positive (FP) and trend (T) measures. Nurses who showed acceptable inspection for two diagnoses were selected.

Results: the nursing diagnosis of fatigue was the most commonly mistaken diagnosis identified by the nursing evaluators.

Discussion: the search for improving diagnostic accuracy reaffirms the need for continuous and specific training to improve the diagnosis capability of nurses.

Conclusion: the training allowed the exercise of clinical judgment and better accuracy of nurses.