Care Plans

I cannot speak for your program but care plans began in Nursing I with our first clinical; we didn't get any formal education on it just kind of a sink or swim kind of deal. I will say this, your care plans should be individualized to your patients, with appropriate interventions that are supported by evidence based practice and the outcomes/goals should be attainable, measurable and have a deadline.

I'll give you a very short example: A patient with pneumonia the nursing diagnosis would be Impaired Gas Exchange r/t inflammation of the lung parenchyema as evidenced by fever, decreased O2 sat, etc. So a goal could be patient will be afebrile by 3/26/14 and O2 saturation >92% by 3/21/14. A nursing intervention might be to perform chest physiotherapy Q6h because chest physiotherapy will help mobilize secretions in the lungs and aid in expectoration.

I hope that helps a bit.

Don't think of it as "making care plans" or "writing care plans." Think of this as the written expression of all you go to nursing school for: to be able to plan nursing care for someone who needs it. Puts a whole different spin on it, doesn't it?

I cannot speak for your program but care plans began in Nursing I with our first clinical; we didn't get any formal education on it just kind of a sink or swim kind of deal. I will say this, your care plans should be individualized to your patients, with appropriate interventions that are supported by evidence based practice and the outcomes/goals should be attainable, measurable and have a deadline.

I'll give you a very short example: A patient with pneumonia the nursing diagnosis would be Impaired Gas Exchange r/t inflammation of the lung parenchyema as evidenced by fever, decreased O2 sat, etc. So a goal could be patient will be afebrile by 3/26/14 and O2 saturation >92% by 3/21/14. A nursing intervention might be to perform chest physiotherapy Q6h because chest physiotherapy will help mobilize secretions in the lungs and aid in expectoration.

I hope that helps a bit.

LOL I had to laugh because not one bit of that would have made sense to me for the first few weeks of my first semester. Yes, we had to do them right from jump, and at that time, I didn't even know how the heck to read my nursing diagnosis handbook or find any of the information I needed! You are thrown in head first and you figure it out pretty quickly.