Although the usefulness and importance of clinical application of nursing diagnosis are well recognized by the academic circle, it is not yet generally practiced. In order to provide data for establishing a policy for clinical nursing diagnosis; a study was made at a seminar, sponsored by the Department of nursing, Severance Hospital, with participation of 190 nurses from 33 hospitals. The objective of the study was to find out: 1) if the nurses agree with the academic community in recognizing the benefits and problems of clinical application of nursing diagnosis; 2) how the nurses evaluate their ability to carry out nursing diagnosis; and 3) if educational programs would help enhance ability of nursing diagnosis among nurses. The summary of findings by the study is as follows: 1. While all nurses responded positively on the question of benefits improving science and quality of nursing, thus elevating credibility and position of nurses, some expressed concern on the practicality of the system in setting up nursing objectiveness, confirming the nursing problems and utilizing patient information. For the 20 questions and the scale of 1-5, the lowest average score was 3.223 and the highest 4.066. 2. The study attempted to find out the opinion of the nurses on the problems that would make difficult to adopt the nursing diagnosis in clinics. The result of the study indicates the nurses believe the major problems are the fact that the subject of nursing diagnosis are not well defined and that the form sheets do not match with the ones that are currently being used. However, comparing it with the result of the previous study on the same question (inadequate manpower and insufficient time allocated for the job were two major problems pointed out then). It can be said that the opinion of the nurses studied this time was much more positive and it suggests that they believe the system can be adopted without increasing manpower and only by giving additional training and by adjusting the format of nursing record sheets. It suggests that the future for adopting a clinical nursing diagnosis is very bright. 3. As the most urgent problem to be solved for adopting clinical nursing diagnosis, 38. 5% responded that it was "education of nurses", and 34.2% responded that it was "staffing adequate number of nurses". 4. For the 10 questions asked for self-evaluation of ability to adopt the system, with the scale of 1-5, average score was lower than 3.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)