Nursing Care Plan for Osteoarthritis ( Elderly)

waitingforthedream · Mar 11, 2009

Can't help without more info. Did you have a patient assignment??? Subjective/objective data, supporting assessment?? anything?

Daytonite, BSN, RN · Mar 11, 2009

all you get from gulanick/myers site is a link into individual nursing diagnosis pages. these pages will help you diagnose.

a care plan is the identification of your patient's nursing problems. this is unique for each patient. osteoarthritis is a medical condition so any care plan you might find is only going to be generic at best. your instructor is going to expect that you have made an attempt to find out what your patient's response to the osteoarthritis is. to do that you need to assess the patient. for nurses, assessment 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

from collecting all that information you are specifically looking for what isn't normal. for instance, pain. pain is not normal. does your patient have pain in their joints? pain is a symptom of osteoarthritis. it is also a symptom of one of the nursing diagnoses.

after collecting all the patient's abnormal data, post a list of it for me and i will help show you how to proceed with the care plan. or, you can look at this thread and see how to do this on your own: https://allnurses.com/general-nursing-student/help-care-plans-286986.html - help with care plans