[ZooMommyRN]

I was the zebra of my class, I loved careplans, I would have rather sat down and put out a 14 page care plan with complete patho than write the 14 page APA research paper for mental health lol By my second year I was a walking care plan book, even the instructors would pop quiz me for fun lol I'm glad I took to them so well now, our computerized charting system at work has a careplan that is developed upon admission assessment ad reviewed/revised every shift.

[smiles82]

Originally Posted by ZooMommyRN

I was the zebra of my class, I loved careplans, I would have rather sat down and put out a 14 page care plan with complete patho than write the 14 page APA research paper for mental health lol By my second year I was a walking care plan book, even the instructors would pop quiz me for fun lol I'm glad I took to them so well now, our computerized charting system at work has a careplan that is developed upon admission assessment ad reviewed/revised every shift.

Any zebra tips you can share for the rest of us struggling along, or did you honestly love care plans right from the start?

[ZooMommyRN]

I looked at them like a puzzle, and when you are finding nursing dx and interventions in the books, actually take the time to read them, it makes so much more sense, especially when you start piecing clinical and lecture together to make a complete picture of your patient and why you're doing what you're doing, is it working or is it not working? it's a big circle, you can't understand the treatments if you don't understand the disease, same as if you don't understand the disease, then finding the right treatment is that much harder

[paja]

Wow - you are a nursing instructor's dream. You really got the whole purpose of the exercise!

[Daytonite]

Originally Posted by ZooMommyRN

. . .it's a big circle, you can't understand the treatments if you don't understand the disease. . .

Exactly. See the home page of this site about the nursing process:
http://home.cogeco.ca/~nursingprocess/index.htm

[gillytook]

I volunteer as a trainer of adults and boys in scouting. Part of our program is to teach them project planning and problem solving. The steps we teach are very similar to those taught in the care plan.
Also it is in writing my care plan that I pull all the pieces about my patient together. How do the labs, meds and orders fall into the patho.
When I work as a PCS on certain units, they have a nursing diagnosis written on the board for each patient. It helps me to do my job of assisting the nurse better because I have an idea of what her goals are.

[Rexie68]

I'm just absolutely THRILLED and realize how very lucky I am to be in the program i'm in for my RN. We had to write care plans last year, but don't this year....hooray!!! Now, our clinical instructor will ask us for a nursing dx, goal, intervention, eval every once in a while on our pt just to make sure we know HOW to write cps, but we do NOT have to write formal care plans. Their goal this year (graduate in May 09) is to make sure we know how to care for our pt, what is pertinent information, how to interpret lab results and physical assessment findings, how and when to delegate and overall how to perform competently as an RN. I love this program.......definitely a new way of thinking!! They're honing our critical thinking skills and expect us to respond to the pt/situation at hand.

[Malenurse71]

Originally Posted by jjjoy

I saw a nursing student and her instructor reviewing a care plan today and she was reviewing something about wording of the care plan and it reminded how frustrating nursing education can be and how mixed up it can seem to be sometimes!!!

At my school, anyway, a care plan for something as post-anesthesia nausea would be grilled for the wording of the nursing diagnoses, the specific wording of the nursing interventions and goals.... to make sure that we were using impractical "nurse speak" as opposed to - oh no! - referring to a medical condition directly (eg pt constipated, possibly d/t medication side effect, keep hydrated, adm laxative as ordered, etc). Students should ideally be able to rattle off quickly the what's and why's. I think the nitpicky round-about descriptions required in nursing school make simple concepts more confusing... and end up wasting the valuable time of students.

I totally agree!!!! Do you know any web sites that have pre made care plans that you can cut and paste to whatever careplan form your school uses?

[Daytonite]

Originally Posted by Malenurse71

I totally agree!!!! Do you know any web sites that have pre made care plans that you can cut and paste to whatever careplan form your school uses?

Care plan books, the care plan constructor websites, are merely suggestions for care. You are so defeating the purpose of what you are supposed to be learning from writing a care plan by doing this. Plus, cutting and pasting is plagiarism if you don't give credit to where you took the information. The idea of care planning is to customize the care to what is going on with that specific patient.

[scribblerpnp]

Originally Posted by Malenurse71

I totally agree!!!! Do you know any web sites that have pre made care plans that you can cut and paste to whatever careplan form your school uses?

Any instructo worth their salt would see through this in a minute. I can always tell when my students blatantly copy a care plan from a book, because it isn't individualized to their pt. And when this happens, they have to re-do it.

Usethat stuff as a guideline, but your care plans should be as individual as your pts.