Care Plan Book/Cards

Daytonite, BSN, RN · Jun 4, 2007

i am not aware of any index type cards for care plans, but i would imagine that they do exist. they probably do not have as extensive information on them as a book does. you would find them by doing a search on a website like barnes and nobel or amazon. i'm guessing that she's suggesting cards because they are lighter and less bulkier to carry around than a book.

i have 4 care plan books that i use for reference. these books have care plans by medical diagnoses. i have a 5th book that is a book of nursing diagnoses. i have a couple of other supplemental books that go along with these as well, but are not care plan books in the strict sense. they are more in the line of references. i use them to help put a care plan together.

nursing diagnosis handbook: a guide to planning care, 7th edition, by betty j. ackley and gail b. ladwig
nursing care plans: nursing diagnosis and intervention, 6th edition, by meg gulanick and judith l. myers

the ackley/ladwig book is, i believe, a top seller. it is a reference book of nursing diagnoses. the book was published in 2006 and was current as of then. each of the nanda nursing diagnoses is listed alphabetically and includes it's diagnosis, defining characteristics (symptoms), related factors, noc (nursing outcomes classifications) pairings and nic (nursing interventions classifications) with rationales and evidence based practice references. the interventions are often what students are after. however, in working with students i find that many also need to learn to work with and learn the defining characteristics and related factors for each diagnosis. we tend to lean toward what we know and feel comfortable with. for most students those are the interventions. but, you really need to learn why it is you are using a particular nursing diagnosis for someone in the first place and that has to do with understanding the person's symptoms and what the symptoms of a (nursing) diagnosis are. this book does an excellent job in the first pages talking about the nursing process and how a care plan evolves from the nursing process--something you really need to know by the time you graduate from school. there is also a section in the back appendix that gives you information on sequencing nursing diagnoses by maslow's hierarchy of needs and gordon's 11 functional patterns.

the gulanick/myers book is a combination of both care plans for a number of medical diseases, as well as having a section that expands on a number of nursing diagnoses like the ackley/ladwig book. this care plan book was written for nursing students. within each care plan it tells you what assessment information about the patient you need to focus on for the particular problem it is addressing. it also gives rationales with it's nursing interventions. i think this book is more student friendly than the ackley/ladwig book.

both books have companion websites which the public can access for free. you can get information about some of the most commonly used nursing diagnoses on these websites. they will also print out in a formatted form a care plan for you after you have chosen some of the information from their site to include in it. they would probably not satisfy an instructor, however. if you want to see how the information for the nursing diagnosis pages are set up in each of these books, you can view them on these websites:

a number of nursing programs require their students to use the nursing care plan books or nursing diagnosis books that have been put together by the author lynda juall carpenito. in fact, i bought one of her care plan books many years ago. ms. carpenito has been a member of nanda for many years and has been around to see the evolution of the nursing diagnosis. much of what i know about nursing diagnosis has been learned from her writings. i have to tell you, however, that the jury (on allnurses) is split on her. it seems that people either like her books or hate them. my opinion is that if you don't understand the process of constructing a nursing diagnosis in the first place and what the nursing process is as well as the nurses role in it then you are going to have a lot of trouble following carpenito's explanations and the terminology she uses.