Care Plan Help... I would love any advice!!

Published Apr 7, 2010

59 Posts

Specializes in Neonatal Intensive Care.

Hello everyone :)

For my careplan this week I had a patient who is a homosexual 35 y.o. male with septic osteomyelitis in the L) ankle who had an I&D on 4/6/10, has had HIV since 1994, Hep C, is an alcoholic (1/2 pint vodka q day), and a smoker(attempting to quit via nicotine patches). I was thinking of writing a dx of Risk for infection r/t compromised host defenses secondary to HIV, alcoholism and osteomyelitis

When researching osteomyelitis I found that it is often caused from an open sore and those who are immunocompromised are more at risk for an opportunistic pathogen to invade and cause the osteomyelitis. I found a lot about controlling the osteomyelitis and that if it is not controlled well or if the pt is immunocompromised it can be a greater risk of infection to spread to the rest of the body. Is it appropriate to include the osteomyelitis in my r/t part of the dx?

AND is it even appropriate to use the "risk for infection" dx since he already has some type of infection going on that caused his osteomyelitis... I want to make a careplan about his further risk for infection r/t his lifestyle, HIV and osteomyelitis...

This is the first careplan I've done that I'm not 100% clear on (I've done several risk for impaired skin integrity, ineffective airway clearance, chronic confusion... ect) :confused: