No more careplans!

Nursing Students General Students

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Just wanted to make you all jealous. :rolleyes:

NCLEX writers came to our school Monday and had a workshop with the teachers. Apparently, they told our teachers that they shouldn't be worrying so much about making us write careplans. So, today our teacher told us that next semester (our last) we will not have to do any. You should have seen everyone in our class. Woo-hoo.

I understand the importance of careplans but who really does them in the real world? And, besides, you learn your interventions in theory class. I thought I was going to die this semester. It would take me about 6-7 hours doing all that darn paperwork...on ONE patient!

Specializes in critical care; community health; psych.

I"d be one happy camper if I didn't have to write those suckers. So time consuming. I do believe they are a necessary evil and part of teaching the nursing process but I'd really like to see at least two instructors on the same page on how to write them. Every facility I've been at has them flowed to keep them standardized. One can only hope...

Specializes in Geriatrics, DD, Peri-op.

They grade 'em. You have to make a 58 out of a possible 65 to pass. I think the teachers are just as happy as we are to tell you the truth. If a teacher has 2 clinical groups...that's about twenty 15-20 page careplans to grade per week.

Different grading styles also irk me. Keep it uniform! :rolleyes:

Sorry, Suzanne that I didn't make myself clearer. I guess it was misleading. I just assumed that all students were having to take that much time and effort to do nursing school paperwork. :uhoh3:

hello all...

ok...hmmm... what exactly are care plans?.... i know they are plans of nursing care. but do you write them for your patients BEFORE you go into the unit?

i am at the end of my first year in a ADN program. we do not do nursing care plans. we do not get our patients until minutes before we go onto the unit.

we DO nursing processes though, which includes first and second level behaviors, a focal, a diagnosis, plan, goal, interventions, and analysis. and we do them as we go along in the day, not before we meet the patient. although, we may have an idea of what to focus on when we get report.

now, i have a care plan book, but i use it more as a guide as far as nursing care and interventions for certain disorders/diseases. i havent had to use it much yet.

basically, my question is, what is your assignment exactly when it comes to care plans?

Specializes in Cardiology.

Hi Lilly.... what u described sounds very similar to a careplan. Some schools have students go to the hospital the night before and do patient prep work. In my class, we have a clinical prep form with basic info we need on each pt and med sheets. We must choose 2 preliminary priority nursing diagnoses based on what we find in their chart and appropriate interventions. We discuss our findings in preconference, go about our day, sum it up in post conference, go home that night, and complete a thorough careplan. I'm sure every school is a lil different.

...Jennifer...

Specializes in Med-Surg.
twenty pages for a careplan is utterly ridiculous.........mine were never more than 6 pages. Can see why you don't want them, but it sounds like it has more to do with your instructors than anything else......Sorry that you are going thru that..........that definitely isn't the way that I teach and never would.

Disease processes, yes....twenty page careplan, no way..........I would have to read each one, or do they just weigh them???

Ours are always 6-8 pages plus a 3 page APA integrated pathophysiology paper on the patient's disease process(es). I don't spend as many hours on it as I did when I first started, but they will always take me at least 6 hours or so to do. No matter how much you know, it takes time to put together all that is required. These are way different than what an RN does at work because the assignment is designed to teach in addition to being a clinically useful tool. I vote to keep them, but I count them down each term... For example I have only 4 more to write and I'm done with the horrid things until fall... :chuckle

I don't really look foward to doing careplans but I really do learn from them. It's kinda like a puzzle for me & I sure am happy when all the parts fit together!! I am a little confused though, I have always gotten 98-100% on my careplans & was told that I had the process down pat then............ I get a different instructor & she has a completely different idea on how careplans should be done is this just part of nursing school??? Has anyone else run into this problem??? Now I'm not sure which way to go :uhoh3:

Do wherever they tell you to, just dont do what I did and say, "No one else seems to have the problem you do with my careplans" Really unfortunate, no...maybe Unsat is a better word, outcome on that one. Careplans seem to have a way of creating a rectal hair up the anal sphincter of the instructors at my fine institution. I just can't win. Don't worry, though. Check-off boxes are not far off in the future.

Andrea

twenty pages for a careplan is utterly ridiculous.........mine were never more than 6 pages. Can see why you don't want them, but it sounds like it has more to do with your instructors than anything else......Sorry that you are going thru that..........that definitely isn't the way that I teach and never would.

Disease processes, yes....twenty page careplan, no way..........I would have to read each one, or do they just weigh them???

Suzanne,

Since you teach, I was wondering.. wouldn't it be time better spent if students did really extensive patho workups for prep rather than lots of careplans afterword? I've always been told that mine are too long and detailed, but in the long run I feel I learn a lot more from them. It's good to know how to do careplans, and why to do them, but it gets so redundant (like I said before, with the advent of the check-off boxes). Your thoughts?

Andrea

There is absolutely no reason for a thirty page careplan, and if my instructors wanted that back when I went to school, I probably would not have completed the program. Careplan should be done before you care for the patient, at least the basics so you know what your priorities are. Extensive pathophys. papers really do not benefit either.

The instructor needs to be able to actually read the assignment and not just grade by weight. There is no reason that a care plan should be more than two or three pages............

Some hospitals use computerized care-plans and others you still need to fill in manually...........this is a requirement of JCAHO, not the facility as far as careplans............ :)

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