Nursing Care Plan for Constipation

The nursing care plan for constipation primarily consists of some simple methods of dealing with this ailment. There are some recommendations for over-the-counter medicine.

However, those are for more severe cases.

One thing a nurse proposes is a warm bath.

The warmth from a bath can activate muscles and make sure that the patient’s muscles are active.

They can also give them an ab massage to move anything that might have gotten stuck in the stomach.

It’s recommended that you talk with the patient for the best possible solution so that they get the option that works out the best for them as well.

Even privacy is a good option since people instinctively function better when they have a little bit of time to themselves.

It won’t completely fix constipation, but it can definitely make things better.

The most important thing to do might be to give them laxatives. Laxatives force the body to defecate and make the body healthier by getting rid of that waste.

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Table of Contents

How to write a nursing care plan for constipation?

First, in order to write a nursing plan, the nurse needs to be able to identify symptoms before they give medical advice.

The most obvious symptom is that the patient is having an irregular schedule when defecating or there is pain when they try to defecate.

You also may have to ask them what they’ve been eating recently.

The human body can process different kinds of food differently, so taking note of how that person’s body reacts to certain foods is essential.

One of the first things you should do is find out what the patient has tried before and see what options have been effective for them.

First, you need to actually diagnose the problem that the patient is having.

The patient can claim they have a certain ailment, but they might just not feel that good compared to other states of health.

Generally, you need a plan to be able to get the problem dealt with in a certain amount of time.

It could be drinking a certain amount of water, taking laxatives, getting the patient a message, or something else.

If these attempts don’t work, there can be an intervention when the nurse can take more extreme methods to deal with constipation.

Causes of constipation

One of the bigger causes of constipation is not drinking enough water.

There are many reasons to drink water, but constipation can be one of the worst consequences that you’ll face.

The body needs water to be able to process how much food that’s in your stomach.

Not exercising enough can also be a potential cause.

It happens due to the body not burning the energy that’s inside the stomach and so the food is just stored and keeps accumulating.

Exercise isn’t a big problem, but as long as you have some activity in your life, it won’t happen.

Fiber is one of the essential factors that allow organisms to digest food.

Fiber is needed in your life to process heavy amounts of food.

If you aren’t getting enough fiber in the heavy amounts of food that you eat, it may be a good idea to take supplements.

Eating oats or grains for fiber may be a bit inconvenient for a lot of you, so it might just be a better idea to get it through other means.

Getting a drink with some fiber after your workouts might be one of the best options.

There may be other causes such as diet changes or not getting enough sleep, however, those are the major reasons.

Signs and symptoms of constipation

The most obvious reason is that the patient isn’t popping enough.

Typically, the maximum limit to where it can become a problem is if they’re pooping less than three times a week.

See also: Do Nurses Clean Poop?

At that point, there can be serious health problems that lead to pain in the future.

The most immediate being bloody feces, due to the waste not being processed properly.

Not only is this painful, but it is also going to make the patient more afraid of eating other kinds of food.

It’s also bad because the chemicals in the colon can lead to cancer if this goes on for too long.

But the other symptoms should be the pain that you go through when you poop.

Pooping is a relatively comfortable process with a few exceptions, it shouldn’t be super dry, and most of the time, you shouldn’t feel your muscles having to squeeze it out.

However, your weight is the most immediate sign that you have constipation.

If you haven’t gained that much fat, but weigh more than you normally do, it could be a big sign since the body can store up to 20LBs of feces.

Nursing assessment of constipation

Eventually, you’ll need to write about your patient’s situation and the specific details of how it’s going.

It can be about the patient’s previous medical history, the diet they are currently on, or shifts in physical activity.

All of this is important for future treatments and how the nurse prepares for dealing with this ailment.

There are only going to be certain ways you make the assessment by making the choice you think is the best when taking care of the patient.

Of course, you are going to have to ask them why they think constipation happened.

As part of the assessment, you also have to give them some viable options as to what they can do about it.

Part of the assessment is evaluating how severe the problem is which is going to eliminate options that might be on the table.

If the bowel movements are only a bit irregular, getting an abdomen massage might be the better option for nurses who want to be able to get the problem over with faster.

If the issue with bowel movements is much more severe then laxatives and other forms of medicine can become an option.

Nursing interventions of constipation

Nursing interventions are the last option if the previous methods aren’t effective.

Generally, the nurse won’t have to do this since the body is usually able to deal with itself, especially when it comes to waste.

However, there will be times when the nurse needs to do more than that.

Taking a warm sitz bath can relax the muscles so that the patient can release the feces more effectively.

Even something like privacy and isolation can allow the patient to feel more at home so that they’re able to defecate efficiently.

Taking some fiber is also an effective method for getting rid of constipation.

More fiber allows the waste to get collected in bulk and for the body to reset to normal.

This should be a method that’s taken if the patient plans on eating a lot of food in a short amount of time.

Even things like hemorrhoidal preparations can be a lot better for those of you for the damaged tissue that’s going to be happening towards your anus.

There are a lot of methods, but the patient and the nurse should be on the same page when they do it.

Conclusion: Nursing Care Plan for Constipation

Constipation can be a big problem if you don’t take care of the problem soon enough.

There are chemicals that stay in the colon that can lead to tumors and other ailments if you don’t deal with them quickly enough.

It is also painful in general and very hard to be focused on just about anything if you don’t take care of it.

There are also different levels of feces that can be problematic, but generally, constipation takes all of the consequences of not pooping.

This is a lot more harmful than some patients may think.

When it comes to medical advice, you should try what works out best for the patient.

Even things like soda pop were created for the sake of indigestion, meaning, there aren’t too many options that are too ridiculous not to work.

The fastest method of dealing with this might be the laxatives that you can get at the general store.

You will have to check the ingredients and how much of the laxative you may have to take, but it’s still a great option.

The easiest method to deal with this is to eat foods that are simple for the body to process to get rid of excess waste.

When it comes to symptoms, it’s hard to have a consistent method of finding out whether you have constipation or not.

Everyone has painful times when they are getting rid of the waste in their body.

However, the difference in constipation is the inconsistency of pooping.

Overall, this is really the only way to know that you have it.

The health implications the patient is going to have to face are not worth the pain that they are going to have to take while not being in the hospital.

Getting this looked at earlier is going to be better.

We hope that this article helped you out with the nursing care plan for constipation.

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