How many care plans do you do?

Nursing Students General Students Nursing Q/A

Before I started nursing school, I read how I was going to have to do tons and tons of care plans. The reality of my nursing school, however, is that we do literally ONE care plan per semester. Some clinical instructors do make us informally come up with a nursing diagnosis and plan, but we only do one full care plan that is a graded assignment. Do many of you do them daily for clinical?

Specializes in Neuro.
5 hours ago, Rionoir said:

But those are things I’ve learned to look up (as have my classmates) without ever writing a 20 page care plan, so doesn’t that say something about their necessity?

There are different methods of teaching. And for what it's worth, the 20 page care plan was annoying because it was time consuming, but, I've never learned more than when I sat and had to connect everything single part of a specific patients multiple disease process, medication, labs, vitals, assessments, etc. together--the depth of detail we are asked isn't something you can simply know before coming onto the floor or just look up while on floor & just answer questions by the end of the day unless you don't actually participate in clinical & spent the whole day researching & connecting everything together. This method is like a post clinical detailed follow up really. I'm not trying to argue which way of learning is better, because frankly I see the value in both your institutions methods & my institutions methods. I do sense you putting down a method that isn't your institutions, there is more than one way to learn & be taught. Necessity or not.

17 hours ago, MiladyMalarkey said:

There are different methods of teaching. And for what it's worth, the 20 page care plan was annoying because it was time consuming, but, I've never learned more than when I sat and had to connect everything single part of a specific patients multiple disease process, medication, labs, vitals, assessments, etc. together--the depth of detail we are asked isn't something you can simply know before coming onto the floor or just look up while on floor & just answer questions by the end of the day unless you don't actually participate in clinical & spent the whole day researching & connecting everything together. This method is like a post clinical detailed follow up really. I'm not trying to argue which way of learning is better, because frankly I see the value in both your institutions methods & my institutions methods. I do sense you putting down a method that isn't your institutions, there is more than one way to learn & be taught. Necessity or not.

This! The detailed care plans are tedious but I remember things I've learned so much more than doing the shorter care plans.

I should add that not only are our care plans detailed, but they're due 72 hours after clinical. That's the kicker. With the workload we have in our accelerated program, it's rough. Is the 72 hours window typical?

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Ours were of "mid-length" -- typically 6 to 8 pages. You had to visit your patient the day/evening before clinical and do a preliminary assessment and review of the chart. Based on that, we had to do a preliminary care plan (2-3 pagers) that night and show it to the instructor during clinical -- that we had gathered the key assessment data, read about the disease process, and looked up any meds and procedures scheduled for our clinical shift.

We had 2-3 clinical shifts per week. If your patient went home or transfered, you had to do another preliminary care plan for the new patient you picked up. But you only had to one detailed one (on either patient that week) that was due 24 hours after the clinical so that the instructor could grade them and hand them back prior to the next week's clinical experience.

1 hour ago, LadyLamp said:

I should add that not only are our care plans detailed, but they're due 72 hours after clinical. That's the kicker. With the workload we have in our accelerated program, it's rough. Is the 72 hours window typical?

Ours is this way too, but it could change with each clinical since it is up to our clinical instructors. My CI last semester was by the book, care plan for every clinical day, due 72 hrs after clinical ends, etc. I had classmates that had 7 days to complete theirs. I hated the 72 hour due date at times, but it was sort of a blessing because it forced me to get it done and not procrastinate.

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3 hours ago, LadyLamp said:

I should add that not only are our care plans detailed, but they're due 72 hours after clinical. That's the kicker. With the workload we have in our accelerated program, it's rough. Is the 72 hours window typical?

We never had that much time. Ours would be mid length also with a concept map. Some instructors let you turn in the next day, but most semesters we had to hand it in at the end of post conference. We had pre-clinical to get our assignments and collect info. We completed the majority of the care plan that night. You had to be able to answer questions on the patient and meds at the beginning of the day. During the day we would write in the bits that we couldn’t complete (like evaluation).

My school has pretty much phased them out in favor of more pre/post clinical discussions. I mean, yea you have to do Med cards and a few basic maps (CHF, kidney injury, cva stuff like that) in first semester to learn the ropes, but after that, it was optional.

Gotta say I never got anything from all the time invested. I learned MUCH more actually discussing things with experienced clinicians and doing things on the floor.

Specializes in Mental Health.
18 minutes ago, emmjayy said:

We did a care plan every single week in my program up until the last month of nursing school. Typically, you had to type up a bunch of stuff that was due before day 1 of clinical and then after you did your assessment, you had to type up a bunch more stuff and submit it after day 2 of clinical. It was horrific and I hated it so much!

I was totally prepared for that, but also so relieved it wasn't like that for me! I think our old school instructors hate that it is like this, but most are glad they don't have to grade them every week. lol

Specializes in Mental Health.

What the actual hell are you writing 22 pages of for a care plan?! Ours are literally the single page 6-box type care plan.

Specializes in Mental Health.

I see - that does sound like overkill though like you say. At my last clinical we needed to know all the relevant information (labs, med classes, why they are being given, last BM, etc lol) and give a report on our patients every day, but it was condensed into an SBAR report and then our instructor would ask us questions about things we should know and be able to answer. We also needed to verbalize a nursing dx and plan. So I guess it is similar to what some schools are calling care plans, but just verbalized from our prep notes.

We had to write out med cards for the first two semesters of clinicals too, but we could use the same cards over again if that med came up again so it wasn't a huge deal. This semester we just had to verbalize the drug class and what it had been prescribed for.

12 hours ago, Rionoir said:

I see - that does sound like overkill though like you say. At my last clinical we needed to know all the relevant information (labs, med classes, why they are being given, last BM, etc lol) and give a report on our patients every day, but it was condensed into an SBAR report and then our instructor would ask us questions about things we should know and be able to answer. We also needed to verbalize a nursing dx and plan. So I guess it is similar to what some schools are calling care plans, but just verbalized from our prep notes.

We had to write out med cards for the first two semesters of clinicals too, but we could use the same cards over again if that med came up again so it wasn't a huge deal. This semester we just had to verbalize the drug class and what it had been prescribed for.

Honestly, it seems like a much more efficient way to do it for your class. I wish my class would adopt methods like that but hey, thats where end of course surveys come in handy.

Specializes in Mental Health.
36 minutes ago, MiladyMalarkey said:

Not simple what is this med for, but why is patient taking, how does it effect their labs, their vitals, what side effects are they showing, etc.

We are expected to know all that as well just for being on the floor. Our instructor will basically ask random questions throughout the day and we are expected to be able to answer. If you can’t answer, you better know before the end of the day and you better know that info on your next patient or it will reflect on your grade. But those are things I’ve learned to look up (as have my classmates) without ever writing a 20 page care plan, so doesn’t that say something about their necessity?

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