Will you???????

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Will you please tell me if my nursing diagnosis is ok:

Risk for infection r/t "Chemotherapy"

Can i actually use chemotherapy???

if not... suggestions please!

Much appreciated!!!

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Specializes in LTC and MED-SURG.
Will you please tell me if my nursing diagnosis is ok:

Risk for infection r/t "Chemotherapy"

Can i actually use chemotherapy???

if not... suggestions please!

Much appreciated!!!

Other more experienced nurses (and students) may correct me. I would tend to ask what specific cancer is being treated by the chemotherapy and what factors concerning that condition are related to risk for infection? For example, immunosuppression, altered wbc's, increased lymphocytes, etc.

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Mucositis due to effects of chemotherapy...plus pt's oral secretion had streaks of blood.

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Specializes in onc, M/S, hospice, nursing informatics.

Possibly "risk for altered GI functioning due to chemotherapy?" The neutropenia may come later (and probably be a separate admission), at least in my experience. GI functioning often gets altered earlier... sometimes on day 1 of chemo. And, yes, we use chemotherapy as a diagnosis, because that's all some people are admitted for. Yukky stuff. Good luck.

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Specializes in med/surg, telemetry, IV therapy, mgmt.

what is the underlying reason for the risk of infection? i'm thinking that it's either a side effect of the drugs or because of immunosuppression as a result of the chemotherapy. that would change the language of your nursing diagnosis to: risk for infection r/t immunosuppressants or risk for infection r/t immunosuppression. immunosuppressants and immunosuppression are related factors that nanda lists with this particular diagnosis (page 124, nanda-i nursing diagnoses: definitions & classification 2007-2008 published by nanda international). with the signs and symptoms of mucositis you might want to consider using impaired oral mucous membranes r/t chemotherapy. the reason is because this is an actual problem and you want to address actual problems in your care plan in priority over anticipated problems. you can use both diagnoses, but i would put the focus on using impaired oral mucous membranes. here is a link to information about these nursing diagnoses on the ackley/ladwig care plan constructor site: [color=#3366ff]impaired oral mucous membrane and [color=#3366ff]risk for infection. these pages list the related factors and defining characteristics (signs and symptoms) that go with these diagnoses.

just as an aside. . .i had radiation therapy for parotid cancer 10 years ago and got mucositis so i lived through it. infection wasn't an issue. living with pain of the mucositis was. swallowing was difficult. talking meant pain. introduction of any food into the mouth was painful. foods had to be very bland. i had a huge bottle of betadine-lidocaine-maalox mixture. i loaded it up into a 3-cc syringe with an 18g iv cannula attached to it. between each mouthful of food i laid a strip of this mixture along the side of my gums to numb them in order to eat. eating was a slow process and over 7 weeks i lost 43 pounds. because i also lost the ability to taste anything salty or sweet my diet consisted of pizza which for some reason tasted all right to me, probably because all i could taste was the natural flavor of the tomato sauce and banana pudding. mucositis tends to alter taste sensation as well. oral hygiene needs to be addressed.

a couple of other suggestions for you. . .

  • use a nursing diagnosis or care plan book for reference when you are first working with and learning nursing diagnoses. you need that reference to make sure you are classifying your nursing diagnoses correctly.
  • there is information on the nursing student forums to help you with care plan writing and determining nursing diagnoses. the links to the ackley/ladwig and gulanick/myer care plan constructor websites are listed somewhere among the links on these threads. what you want to get into on those sites are the nursing diagnosis pages

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