adaptive exchange

Adaptive exchange isn't ringing a bell with me at the moment, but the idea of what your instructors are asking you to do does. I'm assuming you have a list of common stressors that you are supposed to assess your patients against. In my BSN program we had 6 what were called resources that we had to assess each of our patient's stressors against. They were:

1. physical/biochemical
   
2. artifactual/material
   
3. cognitive/emotional
   
4. valuative/attitudinal
   
5. interpersonal/relational
   
6. macrosociocultural

What I remember of it was that it was the way we were to present and organize our care plans. We still had to determine nursing diagnoses and interventions, but they were written to reflect this stress adaptation model we had been taught. Your professors should have given you instructions on how to use this adaptive exchange model and put together your care plans. It's got to be in your notes somewhere. We had a whole 3 unit class on how to do ours.

After we all had major screw-ups on our first care plans because we didn't follow the format and the stress model we had been taught, we learned up real quick. You can't start a care plan the night before it's due to be handed in. Our care plans were pretty much like term papers. The only reason I was able to list the 6 stressors is because I still have my little clinical notebook that I had meticulously copied them in to. All the other care plan information was lost during moves from one house to another long ago. We had to read Hans Selye's book on stress and know Antonovsky's theory on general resistance resources (that list of 6 things I posted above). All our care plans had to reflect those two theories. You just don't forget that stuff.