Specialized nursing terminology in care of people infected with AIDS

Objective: To build and validate, in terms of content, a specialized nursing terminology in care of adults infected with AIDS, based on the Seven-Axis Model of the International Classification for Nursing Practice. Methods: A methodological study carried out at a teaching hospital in northeastern Brazil. The following steps followed extraction of terms from the medical records of people infected with AIDS; normalization; cross-mapping between extracted and constant in the International Classification for Nursing Practice; distribution in seven axes and content validation through a concordance index among expert nurses. Results: Two thousand terms have been extracted. Normalization resulted in 557 pertinent terms, 319 of which were constant and 238 not included in the International Classification for Nursing Practice. Five hundred and twenty-two terms were validated by experts, of which 319 were constant and 203 were not constant, which reached a concordance index >= 0.80. Conclusion: This study allowed to identify and validate the terms used by nurses in assisting people infected with AIDS, which will subsidize the steps subsequent to the construction of a terminological subset for information and communication to nursing practice.