Question about care plans from a pre-nursing student

nursepotter05, RN · Mar 3, 2005

Care plans are a paper which you write when you do clinicals which is supposed to guide your care of the patient you have. There are things called nursing diagnoses which you assign your patient. You have to implement interventions you wrote in the care plan and evaluate the outcomes. It will make more sense to you once you get into the nursing coursework and clinicals!(I won't promise it will make much more sense!!!!) Yes you will do them until you are ready to throw up!!!

mariedoreen · Mar 3, 2005

They're time consuming treatment plans for your assigned patient. You'll look up every medication they're on, write down what it's for, side effects, etc.. and look up all their lab values and determine how they correspond to their condition. You'll do a complete assessment of your patient and write down everything you find and everything they tell you (for example history of respiratory disease, what they're respiratory rate is, what they're lung sounds are, etc.. etc..) you'll document why they're there and what their discharge plan is and a bunch of other information as directed by your program.

And then you'll decide what nursing diagnoses to assign your patient (for example, acute pain related to surgical incision secondary to appendectomy etc.. etc..) and then you'll decide what your interventions are going to be (ie what do you want to do for them for this diagnosis: admin norco 5 mg q 4-6 h prn as prescribed etc...) and then evaluate how the patient responded to your intervention.

If your program's like mine you'll also write an integrated pathophysiology paper about your patient's primary disease or medical diagnosis and then indicate how their secondary conditions will affect their primary condition... (for example if they are in the hospital for an appendectomy but also have diabetes... because of their diabetes there may be problems with delayed incision healing etc.. etc..)

Also, some programs have you do a concept map of the patient's medical diagnosis surrounded by different nursing diagnoses and underneath these you place subjective and objective data that support the diagnosis you have chosen.

It probably sounds kind of intimidating and at first it really kind of is. But you get the hang of it before too long, and instructors expect care plans to be more of a growth process. They do not expect you to do nearly as well on these your first term as they will expect on your last.

twinmommy+2, ADN, BSN, MSN · Mar 3, 2005

A care plan is a way to make you think through whats called the nursing process. It includes:

Assessment of the patient (find out what their needs are like oxygen, skin care, nutrition)

Diagnosis (example: Altered skin integrity related to immobility as evidenced by stage 2 decubitus ulcer over sacrum)

Planning (if their need is for skin integrity cause of bed sores, then you want to have intact skin after so many weeks or something to that effect)

Implementation (what are you and the patient going to do to get the result you both want)

Evaluation (did the plans for the care plan work or not and why).

It can be extremely tedious and time consuming expecially for the first semester, but it beats the concepts that you need as a nurse into your head so you start sleeping and dreaming about care plans (expecially the night before clinicals when yor care plans are due :chuckle )

Harmony213 · Mar 3, 2005

Omg, now I know why nursing school is so time consuming! Geez! The student nurse has to assess everything they need to do w/ the patient? It sounds almost like nurses make the rules up and the doctors are just there to get paid the big bucks! That is kind of what nursing is though I guess. (I'm a pre-nursing student now but work as a nurse tech currently so I've seen this).

katesmom · Mar 3, 2005

ooops

YoungWiseWoman · Mar 5, 2005

I am a semester I student so I will say sum up care plans....

THEY SUCK and they take TOO long to complete!:barf01: Hope that helps! :lol2:

studentNY · Mar 5, 2005

You summed it up perfectly, haha:rotfl: Finishing one right now. Books and papers cover my table.

wonderbee, BSN, RN · Mar 5, 2005

After a while, it doesn't take as long, especially if you've built up a database. For the first couple of semesters though, I recommend writing them by hand rather than cutting and pasting. It forces you to really learn what you're doing.

LilRedRN1973 · Mar 6, 2005

What are Care Plans????? My idea of Hell.....ROFL. Here I am with an approx. 40 page care plan due Monday morning at 6:30am and what the hell am I doing??? I'm perusing allnurses.com because I'm AVOIDING that care plan like the plague....sigh. I always did work better under pressure anyways....ROFL!!!!

Add to that the pressure of trying to get a 95 on my first one so I won't have to another one! Our instructors are trying to "give us a break" by telling us if we turn in one really good care plan that receives a 95 or above, we don't have to do another one. Hmmm....maybe I should go get started on that darn thing.....

Melanie

Graduating May 2005

helpinghands, BSN, RN · Mar 6, 2005

That's good advice RNKittykat!! I'm convinced I wouldn't be nearly as bad at pharm if I hadn't cut and paste the med's in my careplans.

SCmomof3, RN · Mar 12, 2005

That's good advice RNKittykat!! I'm convinced I wouldn't be nearly as bad at pharm if I hadn't cut and paste the med's in my careplans.

I wish I hadn't opened this thread - it's better not to know! LOL