Nursing Care Plan

Your request for help with plans of care has been moved to the Nursing Student Assistance forum: https://allnurses.com/nursing-student-assistance/

Well....you are thinking in the right direction.

There is a standard that is followed (I am hoping that includes your school) and it comes from a group of professionals that have developed a tool by which a nursing diagnosis is made. Each "diagnosis" comes with it's own definition, a list of characteristics , and reasons why the patient might have that particular diagnosis. The care plan itself acts like a recipe card for everyone to follow on how to best care for the patient. This group is called NANDA....The North American Nursing Diagnosis Association (NANDA) is body of professionals that manage an official list of nursing diagnosis

A nursing diagnosis may be part of the nursing process and is a clinical judgment about individual, family, or community experiences/responses to actual or potential health problems/life processes. Nursing diagnoses are developed based on data obtained during the nursing assessment. An actual nursing diagnosis presents a problem response present at time of assessment. Whereas a medical diagnosis identifies a disorder, a nursing diagnosis identifies problems that result from that disorder.

Now you don't need to memorize all of the diagnosis on the list. You should purchase a NANDA reference book to do your care plans. I use Ackley; Nursing Diagnosis handbook, Eleventh Edition.

So...your diagnosis of constipation. NANDA defines constipation as: Decrease in normal frequency of defecation accompanied by difficult or incomplete passage of stool and/or passage of excessively hard, dry stool. So...does your patient exhibit these physical "symptoms"?

Defining characteristics (evidence/proof that this applies to your patient): Abdominal pain; abdominal tenderness with palpable muscle resistance; abdominal tenderness without palpable muscle resistance; anorexia; atypical presentations in older adults (e.g., change in mental status, urinary incontinence, unexplained falls, elevated body temperature); borborygmi; bright red blood with stool; change in bowel pattern; decrease in stool frequency; decrease in stool volume; distended abdomen; fatigue; hard, formed stool; headache; hyperactive bowel sounds; hypoactive bowl sounds; inability to defecate; increase in intra-abdominal pressure; indigestion; liquid stool; pain with defecation; palpable abdominal mass; palpable rectal mass; percussed abdominal dullness; rectal fullness; rectal pressure; severe flatus; soft, paste-like stool in rectum; straining with defecation; vomiting. You patient must have AT LEAST two "symptoms/characteristics" before you can use this as a diagnosis.

Related to/As evidenced by (AEB):

Functional: Abdominal muscle weakness; average daily physical activity is less than recommended for gender and age; habitually ignores urge to defecate; inadequate toileting habits; irregular defecation habits; recent environmental change

Mechanical: Electrolyte imbalance; hemorrhoids; Hirschsprung's disease; neurological impairment (e.g., positive electroencephalogram, head trauma, seizure disorders); obesity; postsurgical bowel obstruction; pregnancy; prostate enlargement; rectal abscess; rectal anal fissures; rectal anal stricture; rectal prolapsed; rectal ulcer; rectocele; tumors

Pharmacological: Laxative abuse; pharmaceutical agent

Physiological: Decrease in gastrointestinal motility; dehydration; eating habit change (e.g., foods, eating times); inadequate dentition; inadequate oral hygiene; insufficient dietary habits; insufficient fiber intake; insufficient fluid intake

Psychological: Confusion; depression; emotional disturbance

So does this apply to your patient?

If it makes you feel any better, I'm in a BSN program (almost done w/ 2nd year) and we were never walked through how to do a care plan. It looks like you're on the right track to me! Good job!

Let the patient/patient assessment drive your diagnosis. Do not try to fit the patient to the diagnosis you found first. You need to know the pathophysiology of your disease process. You need to assess your patient, collect data then find a diagnosis. Let the patient data drive the diagnosis.

The medical diagnosis is the disease itself. It is what the patient has not necessarily what the patient needs. the nursing diagnosis is what are you going to do about it, what are you going to look for, and what do you need to do/look for first.

Care plans when you are in school are teaching you what you need to do to actually look for, what you need to do to intervene and improve for the patient to be well and return to their previous level of life or to make them the best you you can be. It is trying to teach you how to think like a nurse.

Think of the care plan as a recipe to caring for your patient. your plan of how you are going to care for them. how you are going to care for them. what you want to happen as a result of your caring for them. What would you like to see for them in the future, even if that goal is that you don't want them to become worse, maintain the same, or even to have a peaceful pain free death.

Every single nursing diagnosis has its own set of symptoms, or defining characteristics. they are listed in the NANDA taxonomy and in many of the current nursing care plan books that are currently on the market that include nursing diagnosis information. You need to have access to these books when you are working on care plans. You need to use the nursing diagnoses that NANDA has defined and given related factors and defining characteristics for. These books have what you need to get this information to help you in writing care plans so you diagnose your patients correctly.

Don't focus your efforts on the nursing diagnoses when you should be focusing on the assessment and the patients abnormal data that you collected. These will become their symptoms, or what NANDA calls defining characteristics. From a very wise an contributor daytonite.......make sure you follow these steps first and in order and let the patient drive your diagnosis not try to fit the patient to the diagnosis you found first.

Here are the steps of the nursing process and what you should be doing in each step when you are doing a written care plan: ADPIE from our Daytonite

1. Assessment
   (collect data from medical record, do a physical assessment of the patient, assess ADLS, look up information about your patient's medical diseases/conditions to learn about the signs and symptoms and pathophysiology)
   
   
2. Determination of the patient's problem(s)/nursing diagnosis
   (make a list of the abnormal assessment data, match your abnormal assessment data to likely nursing diagnoses, decide on the nursing diagnoses to use)
   
   
3. Planning
   (write measurable goals/outcomes and nursing interventions)
   
   
4. Implementation
   (initiate the care plan)
   
   
5. Evaluation
   (determine if goals/outcomes have been met)
   
   

Care plan reality: The foundation of any care plan is the signs, symptoms or responses that patient is having to what is happening to them. What is happening to them could be the medical disease, a physical condition, a failure to perform ADLS (activities of daily living), or a failure to be able to interact appropriately or successfully within their environment. Therefore, one of your primary goals as a problem solver is to collect as much data as you can get your hands on. The more the better. You have to be the detective and always be on the alert and lookout for clues, at all times, and that is Step #1 of the nursing process.

Assessment is an important skill. It will take you a long time to become proficient in assessing patients. Assessment not only includes doing the traditional head-to-toe exam, but also listening to what patients have to say and questioning them. History can reveal import clues. It takes time and experience to know what questions to ask to elicit good answers (interview skills). Part of this assessment process is knowing the pathophysiology of the medical disease or condition that the patient has. But, there will be times that this won't be known. Just keep in mind that you have to be like a nurse detective always snooping around and looking for those clues.

A nursing diagnosis standing by itself means nothing. The meat of this care plan of yours will lie in the abnormal data (symptoms) that you collected during your assessment of this patient......in order for you to pick any nursing diagnoses for a patient you need to know what the patient's symptoms are. Although your patient isn't real you do have information available.

What I would suggest you do is to work the nursing process from step #1.

Take a look at the information you collected on the patient during your physical assessment and review of their medical record. Start making a list of abnormal data which will now become a list of their symptoms. Don't forget to include an assessment of their ability to perform ADLS (because that's what we nurses shine at). The ADLS are bathing, dressing, transferring from bed or chair, walking, eating, toilet use, and grooming. and, one more thing you should do is to look up information about symptoms that stand out to you.

What is the physiology and what are the signs and symptoms (manifestations) you are likely to see in the patient.

Did you miss any of the signs and symptoms in the patient? if so, now is the time to add them to your list.

This is all part of preparing to move onto step #2 of the process which is determining your patient's problem and choosing nursing diagnoses. but, you have to have those signs, symptoms and patient responses to back it all up.

Care plan reality: What you are calling a nursing diagnosis is actually a shorthand label for the patient problem.. The patient problem is more accurately described in the definition of the nursing diagnosis.

Another member GrnTea say this best......