Having trouble finding rationales for nursing interventions?

Daytonite, BSN, RN · Jun 17, 2007

rationales, the bane of nursing students everywhere! :lol2: we had to do them too. isn't it funny how you know that an intervention has to be done, but for the life of you, you can't find the reason referenced in any book when you go looking for it. it's like they're deliberately hiding behind rocks! i have to tell you that referencing is an exercise that you're being asked to do as much for the nursing part of the course as for the english and proper procedure of writing a paper.

you are going to find rationales for many nursing actions in most nursing care plan books (not the nursing diagnosis books except for one i know of which i'll tell you about in a minute). i realize that most students can't afford to purchase an orificenal of different care plan books, so the next best thing is to put your resources together with a group of your fellow students and share what you have. some libraries will have a copy or two of a nursing care plan book. other than that, you'd have to search through the index of different nursing textbooks or nursing articles to find this kind of stuff. most interventions are based upon the pathophysiology of the person's disease process. so, another way to look is in medical books or articles for the treatment of the medical diseases. if your school nursing lab has a library of nursing reference books or nursing journals you might want to use them as well.

nursing diagnosis handbook: a guide to planning care, 7th edition, by betty j. ackley and gail b. ladwig does give rationales for each of the nursing interventions it lists along with (bingo!) the reference!!!!! the book runs $39.95, however, they have 75 of the most commonly used nursing diagnoses on a companion website (careplan constructor) which you can access for free. there is a list of them here:

http://www1.us.elsevierhealth.com/evolve/ackley/ndh7e/constructor/index.php#diagnoses

take a look at a couple of the nursing diagnosis pages and see if they have what you are looking for. i would caution you, however, that if you quote any of the references, that you look them up in a library to verify them. you should never quote a reference unless you've seen it yourself. most of the interventions in this nursing diagnosis books (and on the website) are evidence based and come from some kind of research. i haven't seen any of the recent editions of carpenito's nursing diagnosis books (not her care plan books) so i don't know if she's including rationales and references in them. maybe someone else can speak to that.

Fun2, BSN, RN · Jun 18, 2007

I get all of mine from careplan books, and then change them up to 'fit' my patient.

Now, I can even add my own rationales, but I still get the basics from careplan books.

I highly recommend owning one. My book didn't have OB in it, so for anyone reading, if you haven't had OB yet, you may consider purchasing one that has OB included. I just had to ad lib.