Any quick ways to recall nursing dx right off the bat?

[CrazyCoconut]

I'm having trouble making a nursing dx for patients symptoms in class. I can't seem to think as fast as my classmates. Any shortcuts or ways to associate a dx? It's kind of hard to explain. I'm a slow learner that learns by association and repetition as well as visually but can't seem to pair two and two together.Ex: pt who has difficulty breathing or pt fell off ladder and broke rib cage.

[lolaviex]

Maybe you can try making flash cards. On one side write a common nursing diagnosis and on the other write a few reasons a patient might have it, or the patho behind it, anything that might trigger your memory of that particular diagnosis. There are too many to memorize them all, but a few of them come up over and over again, I'd focus on those for a start.

[nurseprnRN, BSN, RN]

Nursing diagnoses are not open to being made up on the spot. There is a book of approved nursing diagnoses, the authoritative, gold-standard, can't use anything that's not in this book resource, and if your faculty forgot to put it on the bookstore list, you go out and get your own stat.

It is the NANDA-I 2012-2014, about an inch thick in paperback, available for free 2-day shipping from Amazon. You MUST have this. You will thank me. Carry it to class and you will be the class expert in no time and impress your faculty in the bargain.