Care plan book: To buy or not to buy????

[aerorunner80, ADN, BSN, MSN, APRN]

I have had many people tell me different things about care plan books.

I had no intention on buying one until I talked to a nurse that I work with and he told me that he would have been lost without a care plan book. He says he even used the book on the floor for his first year of nursing for the interventions. He had nothing but good things to say.

I've heard others say don't waste your time.

What do you think? Do you suggest a care plan book. Why/why not?

Thanks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Daytonite, BSN, RN]

i'm quite biased because i've been writing care plans for years. care plan books are useful depending on whether on not you will be writing care plans for the types of patients that they have care plans for in them. you don't know that you will be having patients with the same diseases that are in the care plan book that you buy. care plan books generally only have care plans in them for the most common medical diseases. you may get assigned to patients that have some other diseases. then what will you do for a care plan? i constantly advise students when i give guidance here on the forums to learn to construct a care plan by using the nursing process. the book nursing care planning made incredibly easy also teaches that. it comes with a cd of care plans for med/surg, ob, peds and psych conditions, again, the most commonly seen medical conditions in these populations. but the book itself gives you the information on how to put together a care plan for any kind of situation and that is more important to know than looking at a sample care plan for someone with xyz disease. there is a lot of information for writing a care plan that you probably already have at your fingertips. if you own your own copy of taber's cyclopedic medical dictionary you will find an assessment tool in the center of the dictionary under the entry for nursing as well as a wealth of information on nursing diagnoses in the appendix of the book. there are also free online nursing interventions for approximately 80 of the most commonly used nursing diagnoses from online care plan constructors from nursing care plan books at these websites:

• http://www1.us.elsevierhealth.com/evolve/ackley/ndh7e/constructor/
  
• http://www1.us.elsevierhealth.com/merlin/gulanick/constructor/index.cfm
  

[hikernurse]

Great resources, Day.

I used care plan books (I ended up with 2-3 to cover different areas, like Day said, the books don't cover everything) and they enabled me to get my care plans finished in time to get enough sleep to actually be safe at clinicals :).

Eventually you'll get to the point where you can cut and paste, but it takes a while.

[9livesRN, BSN, RN]

have you ever considered having one for free?

[SolaireSolstice, BSN, RN]

I use my Care plan book Nursing Care Plans only to get ideas for interventions if I'm stumped. I'm getting better at it though, so I'm sure in a semester I'm gonna be using this thing to hold open a door or something.

The R/T and AMB are very generic, not patient specific, as are the goals and the interventions. "Client will express satisfaction with...." If there's anything that my school mates are being penalized the most on on their care plans is not gearing their care plans to their patient, and that's because they live and die by these care plan books.

If you have access to a second hand book store (Half price books) or there is a bulletin board available at your school where people post books for sale, I'd check there first. Maybe check Craig's list or Half.com too. I wish I hadn't of spent as much money on this as I did. All you really need is the Nanda diagnosis book. Our school uses Handbook of Nursing Diagnosis.

[aerorunner80, ADN, BSN, MSN, APRN]

We use Ackley for our ND book and it's OK. I refer to my Carpenito quite a bit for more detail. The one thing I really don't like about Ackley is the rationale that goes with the intervention. They are very vague and some of them don't even make sense! For me it's hard to use EB research for a rationale.

Hmmmmmmmmmmm.....................

I'm going to do some more thinking on this but I'm leaning toward not getting one.

Thanks to everyone who replied!!!!!!!!!!

[shrimpchips, LPN]

Our school uses Nursing Diagnosis: Application to Clinical Practice (Carpenito-Moyet). I don't recommend it. I don't like the format and overall I just don't think it is a good care plan book because I find it to be confusing. It's such a shame too because this book was ~$50 and I can sell it back but I know that I won't get a lot of money back (maybe $15-$20 at most). The book Nursing Care Plans: Nursing Diagnosis and Interventions (Gulanick & Myers) is a much nicer book for a similar price that is much more organized and detailed and easier to follow than the Carpenito-Moyet one. I also like Sparks & Taylor's Nursing Diagnosis Cards, which I could afford because they are cheaper than an actual nsg diagnosis book lol, but they're great! It has all of the care plans on a nice little card with all of the information you need, including rationales. The only downside to these cards is that they are "loose" (not spiral bound or attached or anything) so you need to be careful with them, and the actual cards are pretty flimsy - the index cards you buy at stores are studier than these care plan cards, but they really truely are great.