care plan priority diagnoses

Wow...I'd just make sure she had effective pain med,something for nausea,maybe an IV antihypertensive,an air mattress, and some emotional support!Oh yeah,some anti-thrombolytic measure too.Sounds like you are putting a lot of good thought into this.It is so hard to be a student!Bless you.

Moved to the General Nursing Student Discussions forum

How long has she been NPO? Does she have some type of feeding tube?

I do think that respiratory is a risk and they do say that airway comes first so if you can think of some good interventions that might be impressive. You could possibly leave that open and say risk for infection r/t surgical wound. Expected outcome possibly no HAI will not be evident during my shifts?

Honestly they all sound good luck!

Thanks for the replies!

She was on clear liquids for 5 days and NPO for 1 during surgery. She doesn't have a feeding tube.

I didn't put my resp. diagnosis at the top since it is a risk diagnosis and not something that is actually occuring. Same with a risk for infection r/t surgical wound. Since I could only pick one dx for integumentary I picked the Impaired Tissue Integrity r/t pressure ulcer over a risk dx.

What is HAI?

Care plans are just so tricky! :-)

Thanks :-)

see, the idea that "risk for.." automatically is lower down the importance chain is an assumption a lot of students make when their faculty tell them to use actual diagnoses first. "risk for.." is no less important but a lot of students can't see the forest for the trees so they start pulling "risk fors" out of the air because they can't think of how to justify anything else. faculty want to push you into looking for actual, clear and present nursing diagnoses in part because they want to know how good your assessment skills are and, having assessed, what you're going to do about your findings when you figure out what your plan is for looking after this patient's interests and needs.

however, some "risk fors" are pretty high-priority. i think what you want to do is demonstrate to your faculty that you recognize their hopes for you, that you will, in fact, identify actual problems, and not then just tack on a couple of half-baked "risk fors" at the end. this lady has some significant risks, and if you give them good thought and attention, it won't matter where you put them.

this is where you make your arguments for your priorities. if faculty wants them listed later, put them later; just don't take from this that faculty think they are insignificant. they aren't, and they don't, and they want to know why you don't, either. nice job so far.

Thanks GrnTea!

Great advice!! That is good to know....yes, we have always been told that risks are never as important, but as I did this care plan it became apparent that that must not always be the case! ie. her risk for infection is huge...respiratory, surgical incision, pressure ulcer. Preventing her infections is a big priority! I will keep all of that in mind when I am in the "real world." :-) I am just not a fan of all of the rules for prioritizing care plan diagnoses. Yes, ABC's makes sense, but I am just not a big fan of maslow right now because I just don't think that should be a hard rule that physiological should always come before psychosocial. Would constipation for a day or two really come before 10/10 pain? Or a major safety issue? I sure wouldn't think so. It is much easier to just use common sense then some of these rules they give us! :-) Well, thanks for you thoughts! I appreciate it!