Care Plans

[sarahmac09]

I really enjoy creating and writing out care plans. Am I insane? I get excited about the interventions and rationales that go right along with patient care goals and I don't even mind spending hours on one care plan. I feel like I learn much more about disease processes and critical thinking while creating care plans than I do just from reading out of my textbooks. I guess I use this time as an extension of the clinical day?

Does anyone else feel this way about care plans?!

[sjalv]

No. I'm glad I don't have any left to do for this semester. I understand why we need them and I'm sure they're helping me learn, but I still don't like doing them.

[loveSBK]

You like them now, wait until they're 30+ pages of research articles supporting your diagnosis and interventions. In my school, were not allowed to use the nanda care plan book at all.

[sjalv]

You like them now, wait until they're 30+ pages of research articles supporting your diagnosis and interventions. In my school, were not allowed to use the nanda care plan book at all.

We aren't either. I feel like our school scrutinizes every little detail instead of focusing on whether or not we understand and can apply the knowledge we are presenting in the care plan.

[Esme12, ASN, BSN, RN]

How can you do a care plan without using the NANDA I book?

[TrevyRN, BSN, RN]

I didn't mind them ... WHEN I HAD TIME TO DO THEM (in other words, never during school LOL). Even though I received decent grades, I felt there was a lot of arbitrariness in how they were graded. Each teacher at my school had different opinions about how they should be completed. Glad school is OVER!

[loveSBK]

We aren't either. I feel like our school scrutinizes every little detail instead of focusing on whether or not we understand and can apply the knowledge we are presenting in the care plan.

My school definitely does. The care plan is like a paper that needs to be written, I learn from it but I don't think it needs to be that crazy. NANDA book explains everything but we cannot use it.

[loveSBK]

How can you do a care plan without using the NANDA I book?

We can look at it and use it as a guide, but we cannot do the interventions and rationales from it. I use it as a guide to pick the interventions still, but I look for research articles that have the rationales for doing those things.

[nurseprnRN, BSN, RN]

You like them now, wait until they're 30+ pages of research articles supporting your diagnosis and interventions. In my school, were not allowed to use the nanda care plan book at all.

There seems to be some miscommunication here. There is no such thing as a "nanda care plan book." I sometimes hear students say things like, "I need two nandas." There is no such thing as "a nanda."

There are care plan handbooks (like Ackley or Carpenito), there are nursing intervention and outcomes resources (like NANDA, NOC, and NIC Linkages: Nursing Diagnoses, Outcomes, and Interventions), and there is the NANDA-I 2012-2014 nursing diagnosis reference (which you must have if your nursing diagnoses are to be remotely accurate).

I can understand your faculty not wanting you to just copy and paste interventions and outcomes-- you ought to have a decent handle on those already, and they want to see if you have learned enough nursing process and critical thinking to do that. But not to use the NANDA-I 2012-2014 to make and verify accurate diagnoses, that's ... irrational.

[chasingyouolds]

So we are gearing up for another semester of clinicals - and doing care plans on our residents/patients is a huge part of clinical paperwork. One of our instructors said to take the things from our Physical Assessment such as Poor Skin Turgor or Immobility and find a way to shape that as one of your Nursing Dx's, even if it's not your PRIMARY Nursing Dx, then add those in and also the interventions you would use in order to make your care plan shape out and cover all of your bases. Am I wrong? Did I explain that right?

[nurseprnRN, BSN, RN]

So we are gearing up for another semester of clinicals - and doing care plans on our residents/patients is a huge part of clinical paperwork. One of our instructors said to take the things from our Physical Assessment such as Poor Skin Turgor or Immobility and find a way to shape that as one of your Nursing Dx's, even if it's not your PRIMARY Nursing Dx, then add those in and also the interventions you would use in order to make your care plan shape out and cover all of your bases. Am I wrong? Did I explain that right?

You might have explained what they told you, but if so, they did an incomplete job of it. :) They ought to have said that you can take assessment data like poor skin turgor or immobility and then see what nursing diagnoses might include those findings as defining characteristics. Try that, and it will make more sense.