what's the purpose of those archaic care plans?

[micajoieLAc]

Can someone please explain to me what exactly we're supposed to learn from them. We spend so long filling out all the forms we don't actually have time to learn anything of value about our patient or their condition. Does anyone have any insight?

[micajoieLAc]

Nurse56, thank you for the link, I will look through when I have a minute.

Ashley, I've done just that, we'll see, I didn't get much help the first go request, maybe it will be two times a charm, if it's three, I guess I will ask another way. The thread reference from Joy has also helped provide some insight

[whichone'spink, BSN, RN]

I think it's been said enough, that care plans teach one to think like a nurse. I still don't like them, especially the diagnoses.

[AppalachianRNstudent]

Nurses, just curious - will we actually use care plans once we graduate or is this just something that students use?

[loriboz24]

My hospital still uses them. However, they are all done on the computer now and completeing one is as simple as a few clicks of a mouse. Clearly not the blood, sweat, and tears that I have had to put into them over the years. I keep reading that careplans teach you to think like a nurse, blah, blah, blah....:) Careplans were invented with one goal, and one goal only.....To make me CRAZY!!!!!!:sstrs: Hehehehe!

[nurseprnRN, BSN, RN]

step back from the forms a minute and think about the profession you are learning about. as a professional registered nurse you will be responsible for developing the nursing plan of care for your patients, just as the patients' physicians will be responsible for developing the medical plan of care. though there is some overlap, they are not the same. both -- both!-- are critically necessary for the patient to both recover from illness or injury and to learn about all the things needed for self-care, symptom and complication recognition, prevention of complications, the causes and effects of the illness or injury, and so on, once out of your care.

oh, wait-- did you think everything you were going to do in patient care was related to following the medical plan of care? did you think the nursing plan of care was basically boiled down to, "follow the doctors' orders"? hell, no. not even close. seriously. guess again.

while it is true that part of a nurse's job and legal responsibility is to implement parts of the medical plan of care (other people implement other parts of the medical plan of care, like lab, dietary, various therapies...), there is a considerable amount of patient care that is solely the purview and legal responsibility of the registered nurse and not the physician. this is what you are supposed to be learning and internalizing when your faculty beats its collective head against the wall trying to teach you the nursing process. this is not trivial, archaic, or irrelevant. it is central to the profession for which you are striving to join.

i know, i know that you are learning a lot about medical diagnoses and lab values and surgeries and tests and medications and stuff, and this seems like all there is to it-- just learn all that and you know all you need to know to be a nurse, bingo, right? not true. i also realize that a huge part of the challenge of being a student with really limited experience and more limited perspective is to get a glimpse of the big picture (that "medical plan of care and nursing plan of care being critically necessary...") and to really buy into and own that awesome responsibility. you can't see that now, i understand that, not even close to the way you will after you have been an rn for awhile (maybe a good while).

if you really do want to get a jump on it (and incidentally to answer your own question, so common with nursing students who aren't remotely there yet), i seriously, seriously recommend that you go get a copy of the nanda 2009-2011 book. i guarantee that just flipping through all the pages will start to give you some sort of clue about what i mean. at this point it's a lot like trying to explain colors to a person who has been blind from birth, but hey, some of us keep trying, knowing that in time you will gain your sight and come to appreciate what nursing is, not just what tasks and job actions nurses do. we're really looking forward to it.

[AppalachianRNstudent]

GrnTea,

I bought that NANDA book. There are sooo many different nursing diagnoses in it. I was just amazed!

Then I freaked out because there is sooooo much to learn. I thought to myself, "Geeze, how can I ever memorize this stuff?!"