Abstract: Objective: To construct and evaluate a Traditional Chinese Medicine Nursing Decision Support System (TCMNDSS) based on clinical needs, aiming to provide scientific and objective decision support tools for nursing staff in their practice of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) nursing. Methods: A questionnaire survey was conducted to collect clinical needs of TCM nurses, and an expert discussion meeting was held to determine the TCMNDSS function list. TCMNDSS was developed and put into use. A total of 60 nurses from a tertiary grade A TCM hospital in Jiujiang city from October to December 2023 were recruited as the research participants and randomly divided into a control group (n=30) and an intervention group (n=30). The nurses in the control group used the traditional TCM nursing model, and the intervention group implemented the TCM nursing model assisted by TCMNDSS. The clinical decision-making ability, decision-making quality, decision-making efficiency of the two groups of nurses were compared. The experience of the nurses in the intervention group on TCMNDSS were investigated. Results: TCMNDSS included the following functions: TCM operation taboos, TCM acupoint positioning, TCM food taboos, TCM nursing plan, and TCM health education. The clinical decision-making ability, and decision-making quality of the intervention group were higher than those of the control group (P<0.05). The decision-making efficiency of the five functions of the intervention group was higher than that of the control group (P<0.05). The intervention group scored high on the experience of using TCMNDSS. Conclusion: The construction process of TCMNDSS based on clinical needs is scientific, which can be applied in clinical practice and assist TCM nurses in making decisions, and nurses have a good experience with TCMNDSS.

Key words: decision support system; Traditional Chinese Medicine nursing; clinical needs