Nursing Diagnosis: Infection r/t??? in 9yo CF patient.

Esme12, ASN, BSN, RN · Nov 8, 2012

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Let the patient/patient assessment drive your diagnosis. Do not try to fit the patient to the diagnosis you found first. You need to know the pathophysiology of your disease process. You need to assess your patient, collect data then find a diagnosis. Let the patient data drive the diagnosis.

What is your assessment? What are the vital signs? What is your patient saying?. Is the the patient having pain? Are they having difficulty with ADLS? What teaching do they need? What does the patient need? What is the most important to them now? What is important for them to know in the future. What is YOUR scenario? TELL ME ABOUT YOUR PATIENT...:). What is the assessment? There is not enough information here to make a good diagnosis.

The medical diagnosis is the disease itself. It is what the patient has not necessarily what the patient needs. the nursing diagnosis is what are you going to do about it, what are you going to look for, and what do you need to do/look for first. From what you posted I do not have the information necessary to make a nursing diagnosis.

Care plans when you are in school are teaching you what you need to do to actually look for, what you need to do to intervene and improve for the patient to be well and return to their previous level of life or to make them the best you you can be. It is trying to teach you how to think like a nurse.

Think of the care plan as a recipe to caring for your patient. your plan of how you are going to care for them. how you are going to care for them. what you want to happen as a result of your caring for them. What would you like to see for them in the future, even if that goal is that you don't want them to become worse, maintain the same, or even to have a peaceful pain free death.

Every single nursing diagnosis has its own set of symptoms, or defining characteristics. they are listed in the NANDA taxonomy and in many of the current nursing care plan books that are currently on the market that include nursing diagnosis information. You need to have access to these books when you are working on care plans. You need to use the nursing diagnoses that NANDA has defined and given related factors and defining characteristics for. These books have what you need to get this information to help you in writing care plans so you diagnose your patients correctly.

Don't focus your efforts on the nursing diagnoses when you should be focusing on the assessment and the patients abnormal data that you collected. These will become their symptoms, or what NANDA calls defining characteristics. From a very wise an contributor daytonite.......make sure you follow these steps first and in order and let the patient drive your diagnosis not try to fit the patient to the diagnosis you found first.

Here are the steps of the nursing process and what you should be doing in each step when you are doing a written care plan: ADPIE

Assessment (collect data from medical record, do a physical assessment of the patient, assess ADLS, look up information about your patient's medical diseases/conditions to learn about the signs and symptoms and pathophysiology)
Determination of the patient's problem(s)/nursing diagnosis (make a list of the abnormal assessment data, match your abnormal assessment data to likely nursing diagnoses, decide on the nursing diagnoses to use)
Planning (write measurable goals/outcomes and nursing interventions)
Implementation (initiate the care plan)
Evaluation (determine if goals/outcomes have been met)

Care plan reality: The foundation of any care plan is the signs, symptoms or responses that patient is having to what is happening to them. What is happening to them could be the medical disease, a physical condition, a failure to perform ADLS (activities of daily living), or a failure to be able to interact appropriately or successfully within their environment. Therefore, one of your primary goals as a problem solver is to collect as much data as you can get your hands on. The more the better. You have to be the detective and always be on the alert and lookout for clues, at all times, and that is Step #1 of the nursing process.

Assessment is an important skill. It will take you a long time to become proficient in assessing patients. Assessment not only includes doing the traditional head-to-toe exam, but also listening to what patients have to say and questioning them. History can reveal import clues. It takes time and experience to know what questions to ask to elicit good answers (interview skills). Part of this assessment process is knowing the pathophysiology of the medical disease or condition that the patient has. But, there will be times that this won't be known. Just keep in mind that you have to be like a nurse detective always snooping around and looking for those clues.

A nursing diagnosis standing by itself means nothing. The meat of this care plan of yours will lie in the abnormal data (symptoms) that you collected during your assessment of this patient......in order for you to pick any nursing diagnoses for a patient you need to know what the patient's symptoms are. Although your patient isn't real you do have information available.

What I would suggest you do is to work the nursing process from step #1.

Take a look at the information you collected on the patient during your physical assessment and review of their medical record. Start making a list of abnormal data which will now become a list of their symptoms. Don't forget to include an assessment of their ability to perform ADLS (because that's what we nurses shine at). The ADLS are bathing, dressing, transferring from bed or chair, walking, eating, toilet use, and grooming. and, one more thing you should do is to look up information about symptoms that stand out to you.

What is the physiology and what are the signs and symptoms (manifestations) you are likely to see in the patient.

Did you miss any of the signs and symptoms in the patient? if so, now is the time to add them to your list.

This is all part of preparing to move onto step #2 of the process which is determining your patient's problem and choosing nursing diagnoses. but, you have to have those signs, symptoms and patient responses to back it all up.

Care plan reality: What you are calling a nursing diagnosis is actually a shorthand label for the patient problem.. The patient problem is more accurately described in the definition of the nursing diagnosis.

So tell me about your patient.......What do they need? What do they c/o? What is your assessment......What does this tell me about the patient? There is not enough information about the pateint to develop a good ND.

bear14 · Nov 8, 2012

For CF if its something that he has cultured in the past he will always culture it. Psuedomonas will never be erradicated it will only be suppressed for lack of a better term. A nursing dx could be Infection r/t exacerbation of MRSA aeb increased cough and sputum production. Exacerbations for CF means the pseudomonas is acting up and needs to be suppressed. Once he cutures MRSA he'll always culture it, contrary to popular belief. You have to look at the dynamics of CF. What does the increase in mucus do the lungs or the pancreas. Another DX could be Imbalanced nutrition less than body requirement r/t pancreatic insufficiency AEB lack of weight gain or decrease in weight. Or the infection itself will cause weight loss as the body is pulling everything it has to fight the infection. What are the possible risks of this disease at it progresses or infections increase? You could look at that too. Hope this helps.

nurseprnRN, BSN, RN · Nov 8, 2012

You wouldn't think much of a doc who came into the exam room on your first visit ever and announced, "You've got leukemia. We'll start you on chemo. Now, let's draw some blood." Facts first, diagnosis second, plan of care next. This works for medical assessment and diagnosis and plan of care, and for nursing assessment, diagnosis, and plan of care. Don't say, "This is the patient's medical diagnosis and I need a nursing diagnosis," it doesn't work like that.

There is no magic list of medical diagnoses from which you can derive nursing diagnoses. There is no one from column A, one from column B list out there. Nursing diagnosis does NOT result from medical diagnosis, period. This is one of the most difficult concepts for some nursing students to incorporate into their understanding of what nursing is, which is why I strive to think of multiple ways to say it.

Yes, experienced nurses will use a patient's medical diagnosis to give them ideas about what to expect and assess for, but that's part of the nursing assessment, not a consequence of a medical assessment.

For example, if I admit a 55-year-old with diabetes and heart disease, I recall what I know about DM pathophysiology. I'm pretty sure I will probably see a constellation of nursing diagnoses related to these effects, and I will certainly assess for them-- ineffective tissue perfusion, activity intolerance, knowledge deficit, fear, altered role processes, and ineffective health management for starters. I might find readiness to improve health status, or ineffective coping, or risk for falls, too. These are all things you often see in diabetics who come in with complications. They are all things that NURSING treats independently of medicine, regardless of whether a medical plan of care includes measures to ameliorate the physiological cause of some of them. But I can't put them in any individual's plan for nursing care until *I* assess for the symptoms that indicate them, the defining characteristics of each.

If you do not have the NANDA-I 2012-2014, you are cheating yourself out of the best reference for this you could have. I don’t care if your faculty forgot to put it on the reading list. Get it now. Free 2-day shipping for students from Amazon. When you get it out of the box, first put little sticky tabs on the sections:

1, health promotion (teaching, immunization....)

2, nutrition (ingestion, metabolism, hydration....)

3, elimination and exchange (this is where you'll find bowel, bladder, renal, pulmonary...)

4, activity and rest (sleep, activity/exercise, cardiovascular and pulmonary tolerance, self-care and neglect...)

5, perception and cognition (attention, orientation, cognition, communication...)

6, self-perception (hopelessness, loneliness, self-esteem, body image...)

7, role (family relationships, parenting, social interaction...)

8, sexuality (dysfunction, ineffective pattern, reproduction, childbearing process, maternal-fetal dyad...)

9, coping and stress (post-trauma responses, coping responses, anxiety, denial, grief, powerlessness, sorrow...)

10, life principles (hope, spiritual, decisional conflict, nonadherence...)

11, safety (this is where you'll find your wound stuff, shock, infection, tissue integrity, dry eye, positioning injury, SIDS, trauma, violence, self mutilization...)

12, comfort (physical, environmental, social...)

13, growth and development (disproportionate, delayed...)

Now, if you are ever again tempted to make a diagnosis first and cram facts into it second, at least go to the section where you think your diagnosis may lie and look at the table of contents at the beginning of it. Something look tempting? Look it up and see if the defining characteristics match your assessment findings. If so... there's a match. If not... keep looking. Eventually you will find it easier to do it the other way round, but this is as good a way as any to start getting familiar with THE reference for the professional nurse.

hodgieRN · Nov 9, 2012

Unless I am reading this wrong, Infection is a medical diagnosis, so you can't use infection. Pneumonia is also an obvious medical diagnosis. You have to draw, a nursing diagnosis from the infection meaning the infection would put the pt at risk for something or cause this. Follow GrnTea's advice and get a NANDA book asap.

I'll give you a hint... Something *** exchange r/t Pneumonia as evidenced by (AEB) (What evidence do you have to support your nursing diagnosis - goes here)

I am off on this? I am pretty sure the infection thing is a medical diagnosis. I tend to think the statement your instructor gave was a medical diagnosis for you to expand upon for a ND. Pneumonia r/t invasive bacterial organism is what med students write in med school.

The ORIF Pin sites can give you a great ND. The insertion sites can put the pt at Risk for (what)?

If he had surgery (ORIF), is he going to *mobile* wink, wink - What ND or plan could you carry out so he doesn't have any complications from his **mobility - or lack there of....get it :)

bear14 · Nov 9, 2012

I forgot about the infection dx, that is a medical dx. Hodgiern is right.

Esme12, ASN, BSN, RN · Nov 9, 2012

I'm trying to flush out a nursing diagnosis of Infection for a 9yo male cystic fibrosis patient with pancreatic insufficiency. He was admitted following decreased incentive spirometry and worsening cough. Culture came back positive for MRSA, which he has had in the past. Treated with Vanc, Cefipeme, and Tobramycin.
To give an example of what the professor is looking for, here is a nursing diagnosis from a sample care plan she gave us on cellulitis: "Infection (cellulitis) of R forearm and elbow r/t exposure to pathogen secondary to break in skin barrier r/t R elbow ORIF pin insertion sites."
This is what I have: "Infection of lungs (pneumonia) r/t invasion of respiratory system by bacterial organism[COLOR=#231f20]."
I feel like this is lacking somehow... should I add "secondary to chronic lung disease?"

What does a child with cystic fibrosis need? What does your assessment tell you this patient needs? what are the vital signs/O2sat? Are the febrile?

What nursing diagnosis/care plan book do you use? Is infection a NANDA approved diagnosis? But remember you need supporting evidence that is listed in NANDA that supports the ND. A few that come to mind that could apply to a child with CP would be....how fast is the child breathing? Ineffective Breathing pattern....Children with CP have issues with secretions/mucous....Ineffective Airway clearance.....chronic illness always have Risk for infection/infection or and what is the O2 sat/oxygenation/cap refill on this child....impaired Gas exchange.

What do you think?