Rationale: Diagnostic systems exist in many disciplines. Strengths and weaknesses of such diagnostic systems vary considerably within and among disciplinary domains of the health sciences. The logical framework behind each diagnostic process involves identifying a condition, seeking causes, establishing a prognosis and a treatment. Notably, a clinical diagnosis is a judgment focused on the present, aiming to cluster events associated with a disease. Diagnostic judgment focuses on the past when it attempts to isolate possible causes, and towards the future when it indicates prognoses and treatments.
Aims and objectives: The paper suggests ways to differentiate nursing diagnosis from medical diagnoses, discussing ontology and abductive reasoning for doctors and nurses.
Conclusions: The proposed logical framework has been applied to a nursing taxonomy-based diagnostic system in order to evaluate its strengths and weaknesses consistently with the epistemology of a diagnostic judgment.
Keywords: abduction; diagnosis; diagnostic reasoning; hypothesis; taxonomy.
© 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.