Mapping a Strength-Oriented Approach to
a Standardized Terminology: A Case Study
Grace GAO
a,1
, Robin R AUSTIN
b
, Laura N KIRK
b
, Diane E HOLLAND
c
,
Candice BRUHJELL
a
and Karen A MONSEN
b
a
Department of Nursing, St. Catherine University, St. Paul, Minnesota, USA
b
School of Nursing, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
c
Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota, USA
Abstract. As a new era of healthcare advocates a more valuable and intelligent
approach to care management and delivery based on values and outcomes, shifts
toward risk management to boost performance should be considered that encompass
the capitalization of health assets or health strengths. To make full use of individuals’
or populations’ health assets, data capture and representation are needed. This paper
uses a strengths-oriented case study mapped to an inter-disciplinary standardized
terminology, the Omaha System, to illustrate and compare the conventional
problem-based approach to care management with the strengths-oriented approach
to care that demonstrates whole-person data capture of an individual’s health and
health assets leveraged to promote health values and performance. The Omaha
system provides a standardized framework to organize the concepts of all of health
from a whole-person perspective for documentation to enable data analysis,
interoperability, and health information exchange.
Keywords. Strengths, problems, strength-based care, problem-based care, the
Omaha System
1. Introduction
As a new era of healthcare advocates a more intelligent approach to care management
and delivery based on values, risk management to generate value-based healthcare
solutions [1] call for capitalization of person-centered and population-oriented health
assets that maximize health and minimize costs associated with diseases and conditions.
The inception of problem lists as the center of patient records in electronic health records
(EHRs) to construct a system of healthcare solutions proposed by Dr. Lawrence Weed
in the late 1960s, [2] however, still dictates current healthcare practice and
documentation in the US. In this problem-oriented healthcare infrastructure, problems,
often defined by a problem list, presents negative aspects of data capture of an
individual’s health, and negates person-centered strengths perceivable as health assets.
Our literature search suggests that leveraging the use of an individual’s strengths
dated back in the tradition of a holistic nursing care process in the 1980s when a nursing
diagnosis of a whole person was constructed upon not only problems but also positive
strengths under all problems. [3] When taking on a patient-centered care approach, both
1
Corresponding Author, Grace Gao, Department of Nursing, St. Catherine University, 2004 Randolph
Avenue, St. Paul, MN 55105, USA; E-mail: ggao912@stkate.edu.
Nurses and Midwives in the Digital Age
M. Honey et al. (Eds.)
© 2021 International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA) and IOS Press.
This article is published online with Open Access by IOS Press and distributed under the terms
of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License 4.0 (CC BY-NC 4.0).
doi:10.3233/SHTI210751
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