EXTRACTION AND STRUCTURE OF DOMAIN KNOWLEDGE FOR SYSTEM DEVELOPMENT FOR ALCOHOL ADDICTION NURSING.
Contributors: Case Western Reserve University.
Published: 1995
Number of pages: 264
Subjects: Health Sciences, Nursing.; Health Sciences, Mental Health.; Health Sciences, Education.
Description: The purpose of this study was to define the domain of alcohol addiction nursing in acute care practice settings. The study was undertaken as the preliminary step of expert system development based on nursing knowledge for this domain. The method elicited an initial set of domain related ideas. The resultant knowledge base is part of the substantive knowledge of nursing. The study was also undertaken as a method to systematically gather the knowledge in practice for theory development. The study isolated factors which are the building blocks for nursing practice theory.

The study used a knowledge acquisition strategy to elicit the knowledge of practicing expert nurses. Interactive interviewing was undertaken with fifteen certified nurses as they interacted with a computer assisted instruction (CAI) on the care of the alcohol addicted client presenting at a hospital emergency room. Interactive interviewing was characterized as taking its lead from verbalizations of the experts, probing with questions to explore deeper.

The knowledge was initially structured within seven categories posited by nursing scholars as central concepts in nursing and labeled in this study as the broad disciplinary conceptualizations (BDC's). The BDC's were used as a manifest representation of the nursing discipline. The analysis generated demarcation of the domain into patterns of knowledge each comprising the substance of nursing related to the nursing client, the nursing process, health, the environment, transitions, nursing interactions, and nursing therapeutics, i.e. the BDC's. An overview of the domain also resulted from a synthesis of descriptions provided by the expert alcohol addiction nurses describing what alcohol addictions is, and how it is different than other specialty areas of nursing. An exemplar of a patient was presented demonstrating the complexity of care in this domain.

The representation is incomplete in that it focuses only on acute care of alcohol addiction; no other addiction or phases of addiction. It only partially identifies the problem states or sequencing of problems in the domain. The problem states and the sequencing will be determined with further inquiry.
Notes: Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 56-11, Section: B, page: 6034.

Thesis (PH.D.)--CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY, 1995.

School code: 0042.