Abstract
Different medical classifications and scoring systems have been developed to measure and compare intensive care outcomes in international contexts. Many of them, however, do not include outcome variables to describe autonomous nursing and its effects on the patient's experiences and restrictions as a result of the onset and process of illness, or relatives' or significant others' distress in the intensive care environment. The Intensive Care Nursing Scoring System (ICNSS) is a new instrument to describe and highlight nurses' work and its effects on the patients and their relatives in a way not allowed by medical classifications and scoring systems. ICNSS can be used to evaluate a single intensive care nursing process from admission to discharge or to compare patients in different intensive care units for certain variables. ICNSS can also be used to measure nurses' workload. The classification of nursing diagnoses was described in a previous article. This paper describes nursing outcomes and nursing interventions as well as the use of ICNSS in a computer-based information management system in three adult intensive care units in the Oulu University Hospital.