Care Plan Books?

[dst4ever]

Hi. I am a 3rd year Nsg student in a bachelors program. I need advice on purchasing a care plan book. I have reviewed several online but am not sure what to choose. I begin my clinical rotation in Jan. 2009 and would like to purchase one before I begin. Is there anyone who has used one successfully? If so can you give me the name,author, and why you liked that particular one. I have absolutely no experience with care plans or how to begin to write one. Thank you.

[NurseLoveJoy88, ASN, RN]

I'm currently using " Nursing Care Plans guides for individualizing patient care" Its by Marilynn Doenges, Mary Moorehouse, and Alice Geissler. This is a 5 edition. I'm sure there are newer ones. I really like this one though.

[Daytonite, BSN, RN]

here's the problem with most care plan books. . .they only care plan for the major medical diseases. what will you do if you have to write a care plan for someone who has a disease that isn't covered in one of these books? also, most of these books cover med/surg and not psych, ob or peds.

as i am constantly telling people in my posts to care plans--learn to care plan by utilizing the nursing process. that is how these authors constructed those care plans in the first place. nursing care planning made incredibly easy is a helpful book that explains that. it comes with a cd that includes care plans for med/surg, ob, peds and psych. for $48 or so that is a pretty good deal. you will also need some kind of nursing diagnosis reference. the cheapest is the one published by nanda for $29. the more expensive ones by other authors include all kinds of other stuff that they add to them.

the nursing care plans: guidelines for individualizing client care across the life span, 7th edition, by marilynn e. doenges, mary frances moorhouse and alice c. murr is a good book because it includes the abnormal assessment information you need to look for with each specific medical disease as well as the lab tests. as you will learn, assessment is extremely important to the determination of the nursing problem(s) [nursing diagnoses]. assessment is step #1 of the nursing process. nursing diagnosis is step #2. the actual writing of the strategies to do things to help the patient is step #3. still it is a care plan book that only focuses on med/surg. the care plans that you will hand in for grading will most likely be required to include assessment information in order for the instructors to determine how you rationalized your way to the nursing diagnosis. you might want to talk to students in the year ahead of you to see what is expected of their care plan writing before investing in any expensive books.