Final answer:
Nursing outcomes are the effects on a patient's health due to nursing care, usually expressed concisely and neutrally, encompassing a patient's state or behavior. They are key to evaluating care effectiveness and include the patient's subjective symptom experience, which can sometimes be quantified.
Step-by-step explanation:
Nursing outcomes are the changes (favorable or unfavorable) in a patient's health status that can be attributed to nursing care at a given point in time. They are typically concise expressions, stated in few words, and are presented in neutral terms. Nursing outcomes describe a patient's state, behavior, or perceptions. They may be reflective of a patient's actual responses or indicate the status of a nursing diagnosis after the implementation of nursing interventions. While symptoms like nausea, loss of appetite, and pain are subjective experiences of disease and can't be clinically confirmed, they are still integral to patient assessments and eventual outcomes. Methods like the Wong-Baker Faces pain-rating scale or the measurement of skin conductance fluctuations may assist in quantifying such symptoms. Ultimately, nursing outcomes are crucial in evaluating the effectiveness of nursing care and interventions.