can anxiety be a nursing diagnosis

[meonemine]

can anxiety or diabetes mellitus be a nursing diagnosis I'm still a little confused this is my first care plan & first year of nursing school...thank you

[verene, MSN]

Anxiety can be a nursing diagnosis, however it is important to note than anxiety as nursing diagnosis is not the same as an anxiety disorder, which is a medical diagnosis.

Diabetes mellitus is a medical diagnosis. There are complications of diabetes however which do fall under nursing diagnosis, e.g. risk for unstable blood glucose levels.

I find thinking about nursing diagnosis as finding problems or risk for problems that are with in the nursing scope to identify and to manage helps, but I still struggle to articulate nursing diagnoses at times. One thing that has been really helpful for me is buying a nursing diagnosis handbook, which walks through many of the common nursing diagnoses, evidence for those diagnoses and common interventions. I highly suggest finding a copy of one be it through the library, borrowing, or buying.

EDIT: Not sure why my post is hyperlinking to amazon???? Allnurses has gotten weird with embedding links.

[cleback]

Ditto to the previous poster. You can be anxious without having an anxiety disorder. But if you have diabetes, you have diabetes.

[meonemine]

thank you very much

[Silverdragon102, BSN]

Moved to the General Student discussion forum

[Avid reader]

Here is a good link Nursing Care Plans - Nurseslabs

[HouTx, BSN, MSN, EdD]

It helps to always remember our scope of practice - "Nursing is the protection, promotion, and optimization of health and abilities, prevention of illness and injury, facilitation of healing, alleviation of suffering through the diagnosis and treatment of human response, and advocacy in the care of individuals, families, groups, communities, and populations." (ANA definition of nursing). Those responses may be physical or emotional.... they may be actual or potential.

[emmjayy, BSN, RN]

Anxiety is a nursing diagnosis. Diabetes mellitus is a medical diagnosis but can be used as a "related to" factor when creating nursing diagnoses - e.g., "Risk for Impaired Skin Integrity (

Do you have a NANDA book? My school assigned the Nurse's Pocket Guide by Doenges and it's so helpful when writing diagnoses/care plans!