Audience
PCDS is used by nurses and others to plan patient care and to document clinical events.
Purpose
PCDS serves as a set of standard terms to represent and capture clinical data in patient care information systems.
Description
PCDS is a compilation of terms that represent patient problems, patient care goals, goal achievement status, and patient care orders. Terms are organized into 22 components, which were modified from those identified by Virginia Saba in the Home Health Care Classification (see the HHC source synopsis). Each component contains three axes – Problems, Goals, and Orders – each made up of a set of defined atomic-level elements.