Taxonomy of nursing practice: adding an administrative domain.

Purpose: To propose the addition of a fifth domain, Administrative, to the Taxonomy of Nursing Practice, and to introduce the related concept of organization nursing diagnoses.
Data Sources: The Taxonomy of Nursing Practice, organizational and nursing management/leadership literature, experience of the authors.
Data Synthesis: Analyzing the concept of a taxonomy to capture nursing practice revealed an omission of the management/leadership roles assumed by nurses in organizational, nurse manager, and staff nurse practice levels. To incorporate this administrative practice, an additional domain, Administrative, was developed. Nursing diagnoses were oriented to the organization as client, hence the addition of organization nursing diagnoses.
Conclusions: Including an Administrative Domain in the Taxonomy of Nursing Practice will cover the scope of nursing practice and will provide a basis for developing the diagnoses for which nurses are accountable within organizations.
Implications for Practice: Nurses' contributions to healthcare organizational function and their effect on patient care outcomes will be made more explicit and can more readily be measured with terminology that captures the nursing administrative roles at three levels of practice.