Persistence: the key to nursing diagnosis development.

Respiratory system evaluation and diagnosis is one basis of physiological assessment. Nurses perform independently and collaboratively in all areas of respiratory nursing, and there is a need to describe what it is they diagnose and how the diagnosis relates to the selected nursing interventions. Nursing diagnosis is an appropriate method to describe patients' responses to illness. Respiratory nurses in all educational, practice, and professional arenas have an opportunity to be involved in research that validates existing respiratory nursing diagnoses and promotes development of specific diagnoses that patients experience.