Are concept maps in LVN school similar to care plans in the RN program?

Published

Hey I am an LVN and am starting LVN-RN school soon. I am a little concerned that I never got to do "care plans" in my LVN school. However, we did complete a ton of "concepts maps for diseases". I'd like to know if this is similar to what we had to fill out in our concept maps. I'd like to hear from nurses that went through both programs please! Thank you!

Up Vote Up Vote ×
Specializes in Complex pedi to LTC/SA & now a manager.

Both levels do concept maps. I did care plans in LPN school.

Care plans are assess the patient, find the nursing diagnosis (NANDA-I is the only valid source) based upon defining factors and clinical presentation, plan goals for the nursing diagnosis, implement the plan then evaluate progress and appropriateness

Up Vote Up Vote ×

Thank you for the post JustBeachyNurse. Do you have any recommendations on a good care plan book?

Up Vote Up Vote ×

Awesome! Thank you so much and for posting the links. :)

Up Vote Up Vote ×
Specializes in Med/Surg, Oncology.

In my state, LPN's cannot make assessments or provide a nursing diagnosis, so my guess is that it's not the same. We don't do "concept maps for diseases", we create a care plan gathering data and making diagnoses on a patient.

Up Vote Up Vote ×
Specializes in ICU.

We had to do concept maps within our care plans. Care plans are much longer and drawn out. We did concept maps for the patho of the disease the patient had. Normally, you pick a patient from clinical and gather your data on them. Vital signs, head to toe assessment, lab values, results of imaging.... Their history and meds. Then you compile all of that data into a care plan. The you make several nursing dxs for this patient and prioritize them. You will also do interventions and set goals. For each nursing dx, I have to have 3 interventions and 3 goals. So it amounted to 9 interventions, and 9 goals.

It's a long process. We also had to add genograms into our care plans. Mine were an incredible amount of work.

Up Vote Up Vote ×
Specializes in Emergency Department.

To me, a concept map is simply a tool you use to help you understand some process. I used them for pathophysiology so that I could better understand the disease process more intuitively. The nursing care plan itself was much like one of the above posters in that we had to gather a whole bunch of data from a given patient, and from the data, determine at least 3 nursing diagnoses and for each we determined 3 interventions and goals. Yes, it's a lot of work but once you understand how it's done, it doesn't take much time. At first it took me about 3-4 hours each... toward the end of school my care plans took something like 20-30 minutes each. Then we transitioned over to a more abbreviated version of the care plan and once that system was understood (more like giving/taking report) we'd be done with our paperwork in maybe 45 minutes. Eventually even that went away and all we ended up doing was getting enough info to know the meds, know the allergies, etc... and then take report on our patients and then we were off and running.

The purpose of those care plans was simply to teach us a basic recipe for taking care of some relatively "garden variety" patients across a number of pathologies so later we could combine those recipes into a more customized way to care for patients that weren't so "garden variety."

Now if you got really ambitious and did concept maps around all the concepts in a care plan, I suppose that would be doable but the more formal care plans are probably more useful and easier to do, but concept maps are great for relating pathos and meds...

Up Vote Up Vote ×
Specializes in Case mgmt., rehab, (CRRN), LTC & psych.
I am a little concerned that I never got to do "care plans" in my LVN school. However, we did complete a ton of "concepts maps for diseases".
My experience was opposite...I did care plans in the LVN program that I attended, but never completed any concept maps.

Generally, a care plan entails more steps and complexities than a concept map.

Up Vote Up Vote ×

Hi thecommuter, that makes sense. I ordered a care plan book that the school uses to start getting familiar with them. I am just not sure how to start getting practice on them. Hopefully the book will have examples and practice.

Up Vote Up Vote ×
+ Join the Discussion