Good Care Plan Books

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Hi everyone,

I am kind of new to this website, but I really do like what I have seen so far. Here is my question, I am trying to order some of books for the fall semester (I will be a Junior nursing student, yay!!), but I need a good care plan book. I know everyone has their own opion on these books, but I was wondering if there was just one good book out there. I know that a good referrence book would be Lippincott's Nursing Manual, but I don't have onne for careplans. If anyone could help it would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

Specializes in ICU.

I would really recommend Clinical Applications of Nursing Diagnosis by Cox et. al. This book does a great job of covering each diagnosis (like altered tissue perfusion) for each age group--adult, child, gerontic, and childbearing women all in one place. Your school will most likely have an individualized way of the way THEY want you to complete the careplans, and this book will give you what you need--the applicable diagnoses, actions and rationales.

Good Luck!

Michelle

Specializes in ante/postpartum, baby RN.
Specializes in med/surg, telemetry, IV therapy, mgmt.

i am a nurse of 30 years and have been writing care plans forever, it seems. this summer i have been looking at a couple of different care plan books as well as some of the nanda publishings in order to get a better understanding of what the nursing schools are asking you students to do with your care plans these days so i can offer some help when students post questions. what i am finding is this:

nursing diagnosis handbook: a guide to planning care by betty j. ackley and gail b. ladwig is probably the best bang for your buck out there. it's $39.95 at barnes and noble. it is currently in it's 7th edition and that is the 2005 printing. it has a companion online website which you can use to help you set up your care plans. the website is almost everything that is in the book. the reason i like this book is because in the very beginning of it, is a very extensive 1500+ word index of medical diagnoses and medical terms which you can use to look up the signs and symptoms your patients are having. no other care plan authors do this. under these various listings will be a number of suggested nursing diagnoses that would fit with that particular symptom or medical disease. the remainder of the book (by the way it's over 1300 pages long) is an alphabetical listing of the 172 nanda approved nursing diagnoses. each diagnosis includes a wealth of information such as it's definition, defining characteristics (the signs and symptoms you see in your patient), related factors (causes), suggested outcomes (goals) and most importantly suggested nursing interventions many of which include rationales with references to nursing research. the publisher has a very similar book out called mosby's nursing diagnosis handbook which i believe is also by the same authors, but does not contain all the information that is in the book i mentioned first.

if you are being asked to do concept mapping, the ackley/ladwig book is definitely the way to go.

the other care plan books i have: carpenito's nursing care plans and documentation: nursing diagnosis and collaborative problems, and doenges' nursing care plans: guildelines for individualizing client care plans across the life span. they give you limited information on what to include in careplans that are based on a patient's medical diagnoses. they can only include a certain number of medical diagnoses under each medical diagnosis. they only list nursing interventions and rationales for nursing diagnoses that are tailored to the specific disease they are listed with. doenges includes abnormal assessment criteria at the beginning of any medical diagnosis section. that is something that is unique to her books. she also has a book of neonatal and obstetrical care plans (maternal/newborn plans of care: guidelines for individualizing care) where she lists the same abnormal assessment criteria you should look for in all three stages of labor as well as antepartum and postpartum. she has very specific care plans for all kinds of ob complications. carpenito has been a member of nanda for many years and been on their reviewing committees. she knows this nursing diagnosis stuff inside and out and sometimes uses language that is nandaesque and may be a tad difficult to fathom at times.

another book i have been reading that i am finding extremely helpful with breaking down and explaining the process of care planning is concept mapping: a critical-thinking approach to care planning by pamela mchugh schuster (about $29). i have observed concept mapping at work in a school math class, and it is an awesome teaching tool. it is, however, not much different from what i was taught in nursing school 32 years ago. it has just been given a different name and a newer streamlined approach. if you care to see what this idea is for free, you can read an article that sums it up pretty well here: http://cord.org/txcollabnursing/onsite_conceptmap.htm - this is a nice explanation about what concept mapping is with an example of what one looks like and how it is put together. if you use the idea of concept mapping to develop your nursing care plans, you are going to nail them on the head every time. the only way you are going to fail is if you, through your own fault, fail to include important nursing interventions.

Specializes in Burn/Trauma PCU.

My favorite care plan book is by Swearingen - The All-in-One Care Planning Resource. It gives you everything: diagnoses, outcomes, interventions, rationales, and evaluation... and it covers med-surg, maternity, pediatric, and acute care.

Hope this helps! :welcome:

I was looking for good care plan books on amazon.com and bn.com and everyone said that Nursing Diagnosis Handbook by Ackley and Ladwig was the best book out there. I think this is the book I am going to try out.

Thanks

The Nursing Diagnosis Handbook by Ackley/Ladwig is part of my required books, so I'm very happy to hear that is comes highly recommended from you all. I just got it yesterday and it looks really good!

Specializes in Urgent Care.

Our school usus Ackley as well. Once you figure out how to navigate it, it is very helpful! :)

Specializes in med/surg, telemetry, IV therapy, mgmt.

Nurse-To-Be-Joy. . .Nurse-To-Be-Joy. . .while you have the time, read the first chapter of the book. This is not easy reading. Take it slow and try to digest what is being said. Read it over a second and third time. The short 2 or 3 page section on nursing diagnosis is very critical to understanding how to chose and formulate nursing diagnoses. The Planning section will help explain how the intervention and rationales are set up throughout the book. Also, go to the website and try to do a couple of "practice" care plans, kind of "dry runs". I found that the constructor for the 7th edition didn't seem to be completed yet. At least, I couldn't get a complete list of the client symptoms to come up or to function as links when I tried them. The constructor for the 6th edition still works but is formatted a bit differently.

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