Background and purpose: It is critical to accurately represent strengths interventions to improve data and enable intervention effectiveness research from a strengths perspective. However, it is challenging to understand strengths interventions from the multiple perspectives of computerized knowledge representation, evidence-based practice guidelines, and practice-based evidence narratives. Intervention phrases abstracted from nurse care coordinator practice narratives described strengths interventions with community-dwelling elders. This project aims were to (a) compare nurse care coordinator use of evidence-based interventions as described in the two guidelines (what to do and how to do it), (b) analyze nurse care coordinator intervention tailoring (individualized care), and (c) evaluate the usefulness of the Omaha System for comparison of narrative phrases to evidence-based guidelines.
Methods: Phrases from expert nurse care coordinators were mapped to the Omaha System for comparison with the guidelines interventions and were analyzed using descriptive statistics. Venn diagrams were used to visually depict intervention overlap between the guidelines and the phrases.
Results: Empirical evaluation of 66 intervention phrases mapped to 14 problems using 3 category terms and 19 target terms showed alignment between guidelines and the phrases, with the most overlap across two guidelines and the phrases in categories, and the most diversity in care descriptions.
Conclusion: These findings demonstrate the value in having both standardized guidelines and expert clinicians who see the whole person and can synthesize and apply guidelines in tailored ways. There is potential to create a feedback loop between practice-based evidence and evidence-based practice by expanding this approach to use of practice-generated Omaha System data as practice-based evidence. Further research is needed to refine and advance the use of these methods with additional practices and guidelines.