Nursing Diagnosis

[Doglover123]

Can you have a nursing diagnosis of "infection" (not risk for infection)? My patient has cellulitis bilaterally of lower extremities, and obviously that's already an infection. Thanks!!

[PNWNusingStudent]

What about Acute Pain r/t inflammatory changes in tissues from infection

and

Impaired Skin Integrity r/t inflammatory process damaging skin?

I am kinda new at this too but it you look up cellulitis in the NANDA those are the two ND it gives you.

Hope this helps.

[Daytonite, BSN, RN]

can you have a nursing diagnosis of "infection" (not risk for infection)?

an infection such as cellulitis is a medical diagnosis and neither infection nor cellulitis cannot be used as nursing diagnoses. nursing diagnoses are problems that represent the patient's

response

to their health condition.

my patient has cellulitis bilaterally of lower extremities, and obviously that's already an infection.

as a nurse you will be treating the patient's response to the cellulitis, not the cellulitis itself except for orders you will carry out for the doctor.

there are several ways to go about determining this patient's

nursing problems

. assess their ability to achieve their adls (activities of daily living). look up information about cellulitis, especially it's signs and symptoms. does your patient have any of them? altered adls and the signs and symptoms of cellulitis are the patient's

response

to this disease process. with that information you have evidence of the nursing problems this patient has. the next step is figuring out which nursing diagnoses match up with those same pieces of evidence (put a name to the problem).

as you work with nursing diagnoses you will come to find that they are

not

the same as medical diagnoses, but much of the same information used in determining medical diagnoses is also used to determine some of the nursing diagnoses.

with cellulitis there may be:

• malaise
  
  
• fever
  
  
• chills
  
  
• erythema (may or may not be a line of demarcation)
  
  
• swelling
  
  
• weeping of the affected areas
  
  
• tenderness (pain)
  
  
• warm to touch
  
  
• may be:
  • abscesses
    
    
  • patches of necrosis
    
    
  • hemorrhagic and necrotic bullae

there are independent

nursing

interventions for any of the above which means there are nursing diagnoses for them. fever and chills, for example, get classified as the nursing diagnosis of

hyperthermia

. open weeping skin is

impaired skin integrity

. the pain is due to the swelling from the inflammatory response going on. [this is a pathophysiological principle that you must know.

all

infections are accompanied by the inflammatory response whose 4 cardinal signs in order of their appearance are

redness, heat, swelling

and

pain

.] it is a patient response. do you have an idea which nursing diagnosis would apply to pain? if the patient has been placed on bedrest by the doctor and has difficulty moving in the bed for any number of reasons (this is an adl problem) then the patient has

impaired bed mobility

. do you see how our diagnosing differs from what doctors do?