Care Plan Constructor Advise!

Daytonite, BSN, RN · Dec 4, 2006

i'm assuming you are referring to sites like careplans.com. those sites are set up and designed for nursing homes.

look! i responded to your earlier post. i understand that you are worried about this skill. however, taking a shortcut to create a care plan is not going to help you. a constructor is only going to be as good as the information you input into it. i've been doing care plans for many, many years. if you fail to pick up and list all the assessment data for your patient, your care plan is going to be a fizzling dud. everything on a care plan starts with and stems from your assessment data. my experience has been that most students are not experienced enough to pick up enough assessment data to create good care plans on the initial attempts. most of the time students end up backing into their care plans after reading through the nursing interventions that generally go along with the nursing diagnoses that they believe fit with their patients. then, they begin to realize that they didn't get all the data they needed. if you do not get this assessment part of the care plan process correct, all the care plan constructors in the world are not going to help you.

there are two free care plan constructors on the internet now. they are presented as companion sites to two care plan books that are currently in publication. however, they only have a limited number of nursing diagnoses on the site. there are currently 172 nanda approved nursing diagnoses. the gulanick care plan constructor has only 58 of them, and not all are fully developed. the ackley/ladwig care plan constructor has only 75 nursing diagnoses fully developed. your best bet is go out and buy yourself a nice nursing diagnosis book such as

nursing diagnosis handbook: a guide to planning care, 7th edition, by betty j. ackley and gail b. ladwig. the first two chapters of this book are well worth the price. the companion free online constructor that goes with this book is at this site:

http://www1.us.elsevierhealth.com/evolve/ackley/ndh7e/constructor/ all it does is format the information you choose from the site in an orderly fashion to be printed out. i guarantee you, that your instructors are going to give you explicit instructions on how you are to format and present care plans to them. they won't match what is on the internet or any commercial product you buy.

any way you look at this, you are going to have to answer questions for your tests at school on the subject of nursing process. you have to know what this nursing process is. writing care plans helps to teach you this.

you are going in the wrong direction by looking for software to create care plans for you. first of all, your instructors are going to demand you provide rationales for all your nursing interventions. the commercial care plan constructors do not provide that information. secondly, your instructors are also going to demand you create a nursing diagnostic statements for every nursing diagnosis you use. the commercial care plan constructors do not provide that information either. nursing diagnostic statements indicate to your instructors that you have an understanding of how the nursing process and the determination of a nursing diagnosis works. how are you going to prove that to an instructor if a computer program is doing that for you? your grade on your care plans is most likely going to have a major impact based on those two factors alone.

OnTheRoad · Dec 4, 2006

Knowing how to write a great care plan on you own will come with time. I am a almost done with first semester (minus all the prereq's; student) and I was terrified of my care plans at first. I am sick and tired of finding rationales and giving page numbers for them when I now know exactly why I am going to do a specific intervention... but that is what is required because (or at least I think this is the reason)....

When I am actually a nurse I need to be able to think on my feet and know what I need to do and why without taking a week or however much time my instructor allows me to figure it out. Using care plan creators doesn't help me do this. Looking up what I need to do and why does. It isn't just busywork, it is helping you become a critical thinker and sometimes even a life saver. :twocents: