Introduction. In Poland for a couple of years the unification of nursing terminology and attempts of the ICNP® and NANDA classifications implementation have been discussed. Up to this moment, however, in the Polish professional literature there have been no reliable findings enabling the assessment of the practical usefulness of the abovementioned systems. Aim. The presentation of nursing students’ opinions on the practical value of the ICNP® and the NANDA classifications of nursing diagnoses based on the group analysis. Material and methods. The research was conducted in 2016 among 88 Master’s-Degree students in the field of nursing in Lublin. The research method was an analysis of students’ documentation reflecting the use of ICNP® and NANDA classification systems for the description of nursing practice based on randomly chosen case studies, and the opinion of the students on the practical use of the abovementioned systems. Results. The students formulated 345 ‘for and against’ arguments of the practical use of the analysed classification systems, including 181 arguments concerning the ICNP® classification and 164 arguments concerning the NANDA system. 56.9% of 181 statements on the ICNP® constituted negative arguments and 43.1% were positive. In the group of 164 arguments on the NANDA system as many as 72.56% were positive opinions and 27.44% were negative. Conclusion. Analysis of quantitative and qualitative arguments on the practical use of the ICNP® and NANDA leads to the conclusion that the NANDA system has greater usefulness in nursing practice.

Key words: taxonomies, ICNP®, NANDA, nursing.