need help wid asthma assignment

Biol20fan · Mar 8, 2009

hi guys,
can anyone help me get my head around what are the nursing diagnosis' for a hypothetical patient attending the er wid an acute asthma attack. is it breathlessness, hypoxaemia, hypercapnia, anxiety... are these things nursing diagnosis or medical diagnosis,?????:wink2::wink2::wink2::wink2:

Anxiety can be one. Instead of breathlessness, try Ineffective Breathing Pattern. Hypoxaemia and hypercapnia would be medical dx, not nrsng dx. However, it also depends on the related factors. Do you have a care plan book? The one that I have has a special section just for asthma.

minquin · Mar 8, 2009

hi biol20fan, thanks for replying, dont have a care plan book...must defo invest in one:rolleyes:. i need to find four nursing diagnosis for the patient, and prioritise the care given to the patient??? am getting confused over medical diagnosis and nursing diagnosis. maybe im thinking too much into it??? cant:uhoh21: a nurse diagnosis hypooxaemia by measuring O2 stats???

Biol20fan · Mar 8, 2009

hi biol20fan, thanks for replying, dont have a care plan book...must defo invest in one:rolleyes:. i need to find four nursing diagnosis for the patient, and prioritise the care given to the patient??? am getting confused over medical diagnosis and nursing diagnosis. maybe im thinking too much into it??? cant:uhoh21: a nurse diagnosis hypooxaemia by measuring O2 stats???

You definitely would need to get a nursing dx book; they break down the dx by the different dz (and medical dx), and then you can see the related factors and what the dx would be evidenced by. The one I have is Nursing Care Plans: Nursing Diagnosis and Intervention (6th edition) by Gulanick/Myers. It's the only one I have; there might be better ones out there, but I can't afford to get any others.

Hopefully Daytonite will come across this thread. She has always provided great help to me (and I've received good grades). :bow:

minquin · Mar 8, 2009

thanks for your help biol20fan, will look that book up in the library.:wink2:

RNShenanigator · Mar 8, 2009

You should search for asthma on this site, Datonite has helped with one of these before and the information for an asthma care plan is on one of the threads. You should definitely will not get through nursing school without a NANDA. There are also alot of books that help with care plans like Sparks and Taylor's Nursing Diagnosis Reference Manual is a good one. It gives rationales for the interventions.

Hope this helps.

Daytonite, BSN, RN · Mar 10, 2009

please don't misunderstand this because i am not being mean. i am having difficulty understanding your posts. are these typing errors or do you have difficulty with english? i checked some of your other posts and back in february you were looking for help with a care plan for an asthma patient too. is this that same patient?

a medical diagnosis is made by a physician and is a medical disease or medical condition. to diagnose a doctor questions the patient about their past medical history, does a physical examination, may order some diagnostic tests and then analyzes all this data looking at what is abnormal about it and comes up with a medical diagnosis. a medical disease can always be broken down into a specific list of signs and symptoms that will apply to any patient.

a nursing diagnosis is made by a nurse and is a nursing problem. it is often the response of the patient to their medical disease or condition. nursing assists the patient is accomplishing their adls (activities of daily living). to diagnose we follow similar acivities that a doctor does with some exceptions and/or additions: just prior to deciding on a diagnosis our assessment of the patient consists of:

a health history (review of systems)
performing a physical exam
assessing their adls (at minimum: bathing, dressing, mobility, eating, toileting, and grooming)
reviewing the pathophysiology, signs and symptoms and complications of their medical condition
reviewing the signs, symptoms and side effects of the medications they are taking

our nursing diagnosis is actually the identification of the patient's nursing problem. a "nursing diagnosis" is actually a short hand label for these various nursing problems. while each nursing diagnosis does have a listing of signs and symptoms. each patient has individual and varied symptoms of their nursing problem. it is really helpful to have a nursing diagnosis reference of some sort to refer to when you are new a doing nursing diagnosis. this information is contained in the appendix of taber's cyclopedic medical dictionary and information for about 80 of the most commonly used nursing diagnoses can be found for free on the internet on these two websites:

care plans are constructed using the nursing process which is a problem solving tool. since a nursing diagnosis is the identification of a nursing problem, it is only correct that a problem solving tool (the nursing process) be used. i explain and do this all the time on this thread:

https://allnurses.com/general-nursing-student/help-care-plans-286986.html - help with care plans

all care planning begins with assessment which reveals what is not normal (the symptoms) about the patient. from what i could understand of your post this patient had the following abnormal data:

breathlessness
hypoxaemia (hypoxemia)
hypercapnia
anxiety

an asthma attack is a medical diagnosis. it is of interest for you to look up the disease of asthma, what an acute attack is, and how doctors would treat it. you should also look up the definitions of any of the above terms that you do not understand. those 4 symptoms above (breathlessness, hypoxaemia, hypercapnia, anxiety) form the basis for nursing diagnoses for this patient. i've been doing nursing diagnosis long enough that i immediately noticed that hypoxaemia and hypercapnia are symptoms of the nursing diagnosis of impaired gas exchange. see impaired gas exchange. that would be a priority diagnosis because it is a diagnosis that has to do with the exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide by the capillaries in the alveoli of the lungs. breathlessness is a symptom of ineffective breathing pattern. see ineffective breathing pattern. anxiety is both a medical condition and a nursing problem. read your scenario very carefully to see what behaviors were mentioned. anxiety, the nursing diagnosis, involves physical symptoms where the patient is restless, fidgets, is jittery, shaky, and has sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous responses.

i suspect there may be more information from the scenario that you have failed to mention. you haven't posted enough information to support the development of 4 nursing diagnoses.

minquin · Mar 11, 2009

thanks for your help daytonite. you have have cleared up my confusion. yes i am doing an asssignment on asthma for college, its still the same one that i was seeking help for before. just had those issues i needed clearing up. thanks again for your reply

EDS513Tn · Feb 3, 2012

In our nursing school, we are required to use Evolve for a lot of stuff. Just letting you know they have awesome free Resources to utilize like Nursing Care plan books in there, like Mosby's Nursing Diagnoses Handbook.

nurseprnRN, BSN, RN · Feb 3, 2012

hypoxia is a symptom, a lab result, not a medical diagnosis. so is hypercapnea, and it's oxygen sats, for saturations, not "stats," and if you don't understand what that means, let's discuss it because it's very important to know.

you can use them as defining characteristics to support your nursing diagnosis. i know this is an ancient thread, but....get a darn nursing diagnosis book.