30+ page care plans

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Just curious...

I've read several threads where students mention having to write 30 page (or more!) care plans for every clinical. I've gone through LPN school and I'm eight weeks away from finishing RN school...and I've never had to write a care plan that even comes close to being that long :uhoh3: I guess I'm just wondering, what in the world is in 30+ page care plan?? :confused:

Specializes in Utilization Management.
A careplan is 1 page. We do have to look up their drugs which is on a separate paper. How/why would a careplan be 30 pages, I have no idea and would really despise being in such a program that required that.

Thank you. My longest was two pages. The "care plans" I'm reading about sound more like the project I'm working on right now in order to graduate. It's a case study - includes five med analyses, five diagnostic analyses, patho of whatever current disease process the patient has, as well as past disease processes, medical plan of care, a problem list, two nursing care plans, a teaching plan, and a discharge plan (even if the patient expired...). And because some of us tend to be wordy, they put a 50 page limit on it.

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Thank you. My longest was two pages. The "care plans" I'm reading about sound more like the project I'm working on right now in order to graduate. It's a case study - includes five med analyses five diagnostic analyses, patho of whatever current disease process the patient has, as well as past disease processes, medical plan of care, a problem list, two nursing care plans, a teaching plan, and a discharge plan (even if the patient expired...). And because some of us tend to be wordy, they put a 50 page limit on it.[/quote']

That's basically what my "care plan" has to be.

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Specializes in Utilization Management.
That's basically what my "care plan" has to be.

The thing is, an actual "care plan", by definition, is a nursing diagnosis based on assessment, nursing interventions for the diagnosis, goals & expected patient outcomes, and actual patient outcomes (whether or not the goals were met). That's where my confusion came from, I was envisioning something like I just described...only 30 pages long and I couldn't figure out what was going in to it. But now I know.

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I can definitely make a care plan 30 pages if I hit the copy and paste button. It's really not that hard!

This reminds me of MY nursing school days, over 40 years ago now. We didn't have computers back then. Care plans were hand-written, and I had a real problem making them more than 5 pages long. Also had a problem getting passing grades on them. My instructor said they weren't long enough.

So... I had my boyfriend, an English major, rewrite them for me. He could take one issue/action and rewrite it 12 different ways, making the one or 2 lines I had written into 2 pages. The outcome was that my care plans turned into (verbose, redundant) 20 pagers. That's when I began making As on them. Apparently the instructor wasn't looking so much for quality as quantity.

BTW, I'm learning more about verbosity and redundancy. Seems to be the way of the world today!

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He could take one issue/action and rewrite it 12 different ways, making the one or 2 lines I had written into 2 pages. The outcome was that my care plans turned into (verbose, redundant) 20 pagers. That's when I began making As on them.

That's how it seemed to me sometimes!

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