Nanda diagnoses and care plans

Esme12, ASN, BSN, RN · Jul 31, 2014

While your program may not be using them....you will be using them in nursing just not in the same way. I'm willing to bet your school is still using NANDA. It is the standard of care.

christina731 · Jul 31, 2014

Sorry Esme I should have been more specific. By "we" I mean the profession not "we" as in my school. I don't know why these people are saying this. I highly doubt that the nanda people will do away with nanda diagnoses. That just seems nuts to me.

Esme12, ASN, BSN, RN · Aug 1, 2014

Although some may disagree with me...the real fact is once you are a nurse the care plans...in acute care...are pre-made point and click....add to record. You will never have to do a care plan like school again.

nurseprnRN, BSN, RN · Aug 1, 2014

This is errant nonsense, baloney indeed. Nursing diagnosis is what allows you to practice as an RN, and you have only to look up your state nurse practice act (which you should do anyway) and the ANA Scope and Standards of Nursing (which are binding on all of us in the US whether we are ANA members or not) to understand that. Nursing diagnosis is what

Now, this sounds as if somebody misunderstood. You will likely never have to write out full plans for nursing care in the format and language you used n nursing school. This is for the same reason that you don't have to diagram sentences like you did in eighth grade. When you did that, you learned how to construct a logical, proper sentence to communicate an idea clearly. When you learned to do basic arithmetic through drills in grade school, it was to prepare you to do higher-level things (like med algebra). That's what you are learning in school. I hope.

I am starting (belatedly, apparently because I am a slow learner) to learn that somehow the idea in nursing school these days is to "pick" a nursing diagnosis when writing a care plan. No, it's not.The idea is to learn to make nursing diagnoses, based on assessment, to use when you plan your patient's nursing care.

Please, please, please try to wrap your head around this concept. It's not academic fluff, it's the conceptual framework, the overarching concept, of the professional registered nursing practice to which you aspire.

You are in nursing school to learn to own your own nursing practice. You are learning to make nursing diagnoses using the evidence from your assessment in exactly the same way that medical students learn to make their medical diagnoses based on their assessments.

Be that nurse that really knows what s/he is doing and why. Don't just scan a list and pick something that sounds good. Take the time to do what you are supposed to do: examine the evidence and make the nursing diagnosis so you can plan your patient's nursing care based on it.

Let this also be a lesson in listening to rumors :)

christina731 · Aug 2, 2014

This is errant nonsense, baloney indeed. Nursing diagnosis is what allows you to practice as an RN, and you have only to look up your state nurse practice act (which you should do anyway) and the ANA Scope and Standards of Nursing (which are binding on all of us in the US whether we are ANA members or not) to understand that. Nursing diagnosis is what

Now, this sounds as if somebody misunderstood. You will likely never have to write out full plans for nursing care in the format and language you used n nursing school. This is for the same reason that you don't have to diagram sentences like you did in eighth grade. When you did that, you learned how to construct a logical, proper sentence to communicate an idea clearly. When you learned to do basic arithmetic through drills in grade school, it was to prepare you to do higher-level things (like med algebra). That's what you are learning in school. I hope.

I am starting (belatedly, apparently because I am a slow learner) to learn that somehow the idea in nursing school these days is to "pick" a nursing diagnosis when writing a care plan. No, it's not.The idea is to learn to make nursing diagnoses, based on assessment, to use when you plan your patient's nursing care.

Please, please, please try to wrap your head around this concept. It's not academic fluff, it's the conceptual framework, the overarching concept, of the professional registered nursing practice to which you aspire.

You are in nursing school to learn to own your own nursing practice. You are learning to make nursing diagnoses using the evidence from your assessment in exactly the same way that medical students learn to make their medical diagnoses based on their assessments.

Be that nurse that really knows what s/he is doing and why. Don't just scan a list and pick something that sounds good. Take the time to do what you are supposed to do: examine the evidence and make the nursing diagnosis so you can plan your patient's nursing care based on it.

Let this also be a lesson in listening to rumors :)

I kind of figured that it was nonsense which is why I summoned your advice on this anonymous board before I sounded like a total idiot to my instructor! Haha. I think this is definitely a case of misinformation. I'm sure that these people were told that we won't do the same care plans as we do in school in the real world, not that nurses don't use diagnoses.

In my program, they definitely teach us to formulate diagnoses based on assessment data and discourage us from using the medical diagnosis as the sole form of information that you use.

I always question everything, my instructors even call me "the one with all the questions" so that's why I came here to see if what I heard was true or false :)

Esme12, ASN, BSN, RN · Aug 2, 2014

I kind of figured that it was nonsense which is why I summoned your advice on this anonymous board before I sounded like a total idiot to my instructor! Haha. I think this is definitely a case of misinformation. I'm sure that these people were told that we won't do the same care plans as we do in school in the real world, not that nurses don't use diagnoses.
In my program, they definitely teach us to formulate diagnoses based on assessment data and discourage us from using the medical diagnosis as the sole form of information that you use.
I always question everything, my instructors even call me "the one with all the questions" so that's why I came here to see if what I heard was true or false :)

Exactly..... you use nursing diagnosis in your thought process everyday...it how you think like a nurse. But the actual care plans you do now in school...no they are not "present" as far as doing them physically on the patients the way you do in school.

I truly do not think using formal NANDA language at the bedside. But without NANDA (well actually we didn't have NANDA when I went to school) I would not know how to process the information properly and what to look for and prioritize. When I have a patient with a mucous plug on a vent and is anxious...my brain does not go...this patient has an ineffective airway clearance related to a mucus plug as evidenced by a low O2 sat, tachycardia, and cyanosis and this patient has anxiety related to hypoxia/air hunger related to.....according to Maslows I should probably mange the airway.

I think "Holy crap! This patient has a plug and their O2 sat is in the tank...they need to be suctioned then given something to chill when the crisis is averted". But I learned that from doing NANDA and care plans.

nurseprnRN, BSN, RN · Aug 3, 2014

Without NANDA (well actually we didn't have NANDA when I went to school) I would not know how to process the information properly and what to look for and prioritize. When I have a patient with a mucous plug on a vent and is anxious...my brain does not go...this patient has an ineffective airway clearance related to a mucus plug as evidenced by a low O2 sat, tachycardia, and cyanosis and this patient has anxiety related to hypoxia/air hunger related to.....according to Maslows I should probably mange the airway.
I think "Holy crap! This patient has a plug and their O2 sat is in the tank...they need to be suctioned then given something to chill when the crisis is averted". But I learned that from doing NANDA and care plans.

A perfect example of what I was trying to describe with the analogies of diagramming sentences and doing basic arithmetic drills.

Nursing diagnosis, properly taught, teaches students how to think like nurses, their very first responsibility (and often one of the last things they understand).