IHPs

[Txschoolrn]

Hello! How up-to-date are your IPH's? I have been a school nurse going on 2 years and I have only done a handful. I know they probably need to be done, but (1) where to find the time, and (2) just seems like added busy work as I am the only nurse and we aren't in a district. I know I am just lagging behind, and will probably spend a staff development day soon working on getting ours up to date.

[WineRN]

I updated them all this year but only because this is my first fall and our SNAP program makes it easy.

[River Song, RN]

Does it make me a bad nurse to say that I honestly don't see the point for much of this paperwork?? I mean sure, I have my handful of kids with health issues identified and I know their histories. I have a handful of kids who receive oral medications at school for ADHD and a shelf full of inhalers for my asthmatics but I'm still struggling to create these care plans that I know are expected.

I think my struggle is in going to nursing school at a university and doing clinicals in a hospital that was already computer charting and computer "care planning" in 2003 (though what I've always done in the hospital doesn't remotely look like what the nursing textbooks showed). SInce graduation, I've always worked with electronic records in acute care and "care planning" was more choosing the medical diagnosis and checking the boxes of what we were doing.

My school district doesn't have any templates or a documentation program that helps with this and IHPs are written by hand. I just can't wrap my head around it as it looks like those things I saw in my nursing textbooks that in no way resemble reality.

Full disclosure, before I was a nurse I worked as a long term care inspector and care planning was always such a big focus - as in the focus on a document. I would have CNAs that knew their residents needs forwards and backwards but by golly if that wasn't written down on a document we had to issue a deficiency. I do understand that if it isn't documented it wasn't done and that care plans show a process and plan but I still feel that sometimes we create paperwork just to have it. Maybe if I found a IHP/care plan tool that made sense and seemed useful to myself and others, I would feel differently - or if I had students with complex health needs I would "get it" more.

[ruby_jane, BSN, RN]

Does it make me a bad nurse to say that I honestly don't see the point for much of this paperwork?? I mean sure, I have my handful of kids with health issues identified and I know their histories. I have a handful of kids who receive oral medications at school for ADHD and a shelf full of inhalers for my asthmatics but I'm still struggling to create these care plans that I know are expected.

Nope. Just makes you honest.

My school district doesn't have any templates or a documentation program that helps with this and IHPs are written by hand. I just can't wrap my head around it as it looks like those things I saw in my nursing textbooks that in no way resemble reality.

Oh wow.

Every year I update the existing IHP. Sometimes things change; most times they don't but I am required to do so AND print a copy of the thing AND put the copy in a binder.

Fortunately we have some dandy templates.

Because it's required, I do it. There are kids with a real need (the ones with EpiPens, the ones who are diabetic) and then there are kids with IHPs that I never see (but I keep on updating).

Good luck.

[AdobeRN]

I do what I have to do and try to keep it at a minimum. We are lucky - since we have some templates that nurses have created and shared thru the years.

Personally I think they are silly and a huge waste of time - basically a care plan written by me for me to follow with most of the interventions being things that I would think are part of standard nursing care that I would do.