Core interventions for nursing specialty areas

In this section, we list alphabetically the core interventions for 49 specialty areas. Core interventions are defined as a limited, central set of interventions that define the nature of the specialty. A person reading the list of core interventions would be able to determine the area of specialty practice. The core set of interventions does not include all the interventions used by nurses in the specialty; rather, the set includes those interventions used frequently or predominately by nurses in the specialty, or those that are critical to the role of the specialty nurse.

This list of specialty core interventions initially resulted from a survey in 1995 and 1996; the research and an initial list of core interventions for 39 specialty areas were published in the third edition of Nursing Interventions Classification (NIC). The results of the survey were also published in an article: McCloskey, J. C., Bulechek, G., & Donahue, W. (1998). Nursing interventions core to specialty practice, Nursing Outlook, 46(2), 67-76. New specialties as well as updates of new interventions were added in the fourth and fifth editions.

The identification of core interventions by specialty is an initial step to communicate the nature of nursing in different practice areas. The listing of core interventions by specialty areas of practice is very useful in the development of nursing information systems, staff education programs, nurse competency evaluations, referral networks, certification/licensing examinations, nursing school curricula, and research and theory construction. We encourage members of specialty organizations who are interested in building clinical databases to use the interventions contained in NIC so that nurses can achieve the benefits inherent in a standardized language. We welcome the submission of new interventions as users see the need.