How do you answer "Discuss the nursing management of a pt w/ ... "

[RunawayN]

Hey Everybody

I'm in my second semester of nursing school and I always do study guide/learning objective questions but I never really knew how to answer "discuss the nursing management of a patient with....."

I usually try to separate it by Nursing Assessment, Nursing Diagnosis, Planning, Nursing Implementation, and Home Care but after looking at my notes from the past semester, it looks like a bloody mess.

Any advice on answering these questions?

[Double-Helix, BSN, RN]

Sounds like a really good way to break it down to me. You might find it easier if you only focus on things that are specific to the diagnoses at hand. Bullet points might also make your notes seem more organized then full sentences.

Assessment: What are the important things you're going to monitor for this patient? For example- you're going to monitor lung sounds in every patient. But in a patient with CHF, you'll be specifically concerned about crackles in the lungs.

Diagnoses: I'm not sure you need to list nursing diagnoses when you're discussing the management of a patient, but it might be helpful to list the most common complications and what you would do to fix them.

Planning/Implementation: Describe the typical interventions you'll perform in the care of this patient.

Discharge Planning: What needs to be in place for this patient to leave the hospital safely?

[nurseprnRN, BSN, RN]

as a hint, do this: discuss the nursing management of a patient with a cast. now flip open your med/surg text and find that part. voila! (there it is!) they discuss the nursing care of a patient with a cast.

likewise nursing management of, well, anything else you can think of. once you have read a couple of those with the "discuss" part in your mind as a framework, i think you'll get the hang of it. it's assessment, planning, implementation, reevaluation, revision, patient teaching... you know this stuff. you do.

remember, you are focusing on the nursing management, not medical management. we are legally bound to implement parts of the medical plan of care, and to assess the results; this means that "ivs/antibiotics as ordered" should never appear in a nursing plan of care and it's laziness if it does. you're gonna do them, sure, but they are not part of the nursing plan. what things will the nurse do for this patient that are independent of the medical plan of care, not part of it?

the bullet list is a good idea, as it may force you to focus on the rationales for each entry before you get tempted to write an essay on each.