We all need a plan in doing anything be it cooking, learning, study nursing, or working as a nurse, don’t we? Planning is the most important part of any work.
Without a plan everything is just directionless as plans provide us direction, they direct us to move further.
Similarly, we need a plan for nursing care.
If your aim is to become a registered nurse, then it is very important for you to know about the Nursing Care Plans or NCPs.
But before that, we need to know what exactly is a nursing care plan?
A nursing care plan is a type of plan that directs a nurse on how to take care of a patient i.e, an individual, a family, a community, or anyone else. It contains all the notes and guidelines of nursing and it acts as a means of communication between the patients and other healthcare service providers.
Furthermore, we are going to discuss each and everything about a nursing care plan in detail.
A nursing care plan, nursing care plan examples, how it is prepared, why it is important to make a nursing care plan, evaluation of a nursing care plan, its template, and everything that you need to know are mentioned further in this blog.
To know more, keep reading.
Table of Contents
What is the nursing care plan?
While you are here, you must have a bit of knowledge about nursing and nursing care plans. But also, as you are here you must be in search of more elaboration and explanation.
So without wasting much time, let’s discuss the nursing care plan in detail.
Basically, a nursing care plan is a form of plan that directs a nurse for taking care of the patient.
See also: How Nurses Can Improve Patient Outcomes?
It is a plan that contains all the information of a patient from the disease he or she is suffering, the patient’s old reports or diagnosis, the aim of the treatment, target to achieve, the progress of the patient’s health to evaluation.
As the treatment passes by or proceeds, the plan gets updated accordingly with progress in the care.
Most importantly, a nursing care plan contains the status of a patient’s health.
A nursing plan consists of four components as assessment, diagnosis, result, intervention, and evaluation. Each component has an important role at each and every step.
According to some highly skilled and registered nurses, a nursing plan is the most significant part of nursing.
Without a nursing plan, nursing is just waste and of no use and no one will prefer an unregistered and unskilled nurse. Generally, a care plan focuses on identifying the problem and finding ways to solve that problem.
Its main purpose is to take proper care of the patient and to ensure the safety of the patient.
The main aim of the nursing care plan is to perform nursing with full evidence and proof.
Also, it wins the trust of a patient by providing a familiar, friendly, and caring environment.
It runs on the holistic care approach which means the whole body of a person is considered while taking care of it, including physical, social, and psychological problems.
Other than this, with the growth of the digital world, nursing plans are also computerized.
Yes, a plan which is made digitally over the computer screen is called a computerized nursing plan.
In nursing, a computerized plan is said to be more valuable and detailed in comparison to the plan written on paper by hand.
Evaluation of nursing care plan
This is the last and the final step of the nursing care plans.
We all study, prepare and then give exams and we get results after some time.
In the same way, evaluation of the nursing care plan is the most crucial step of nursing because without it we won’t be able to check the progress.
This process determines whether there is some progress in the condition or not.
The nurse does the evaluation process to check if they met the expected goals or not.
In other words, evaluation is a planned and purposeful activity that is done to check a client’s progress from the problem.
Without an evaluation process the whole nursing care plan is wasteful and uncertain.
Nursing care plan examples
Every other patient needs a specific nursing care plan. There are different nursing plans according to the problems of a patient.
The nursing care plan examples include a sedentary lifestyle nursing plan, middle east respiratory syndrome coronavirus, nausea, fracture caring plans, heart failure nursing plan, grieving, low incontinence, low self-esteem, and many more such nursing plans.
Now, let’s know about a nursing plan example in detail.
Grieving nursing plan
Everyone one of us grieves, we all are aware of the word grief, isn’t it?
Grieving is really personal and difficult to understand the process. It includes emotional, social, psychological, and every such behavior of the patient.
According to most of us grieving is subjective because it is.
See also: Objective vs Subjective Data – What are the Differences?
It is just a way to react to the loss of something so dear to us or something else.
We, humans, tend to feel grief at the loss of a friend, lover, mother, father, self, or any other loss. This grief sometimes turns into something big, so before that, the person should be diagnosed properly.
A normal person cannot deal with it as he/she is not experienced enough.
But these nurses deal with all this on a regular basis which makes them experienced and hence they treat better.
Nurses make use of their knowledge about grief to help people out.
They identify and evaluate every factor of the problem, its status, and the solutions.
At first, they find out the factors related to the problem.
Then, they define all the characteristics, goals, and results of grieving, their assessment, interventions, and references.
Nursing care plan sample
A nursing care plan has all the details of a plan like a name, date started, the problem of the patient.
The client’s name comes at the top left-hand side.
After that comes the name of the nurse who’s dealing with the patient for making him/her better.
It is in the tabular form with four columns in it.
All the four columns contain four different data day-wise or month wise.
The first column contains the diagnosis or the disease of the patient, the second column is filled with the goals to achieve and the results to compare and measure the progress.
Coming to the third column is the intervention and in the last column, the plan is evaluated. This is how a nursing care plan comes into action and is said to be successful.
FREE DOWNLOADABLE TEMPLATES
Each and every nursing plan differs in one way or another.
Nursing care plans vary from school to school and place to place, but here are some free templates to help you out in choosing the plan accordingly.
After you have downloaded the template, you should read the next chapter about how to do nursing care plan.
How to do a nursing care plan?
Video made by NURSINGcom
Care plans are an integral part of the syllabus of students at nursing schools.
Developing a care plan is the most important thing to do.
Not everyone writes a nursing plan because of the flexibility of the hospitals and owners.
But you must make a nursing care plan, it includes the following steps:
- Assessment
- Diagnosis Outcomes
- Planning Implementation
- Evaluation
First, you need to identify the patient and the problem.
Make use of the social, physical, and psychological data, areas of improvement, and the risk factors.
After proper assessment and analysis, you need to identify the problems and list the diagnosis and whatever that you can handle without any intervention.
After having acknowledged the problems of the patient, a nurse needs to implement nursing interventions like giving medications, checking the signs, talking to them, and more.
And when this all is done, then comes the most important and last step that is evaluation of the whole data as well as the patient.
Conclusion
This article covered all the basics about the nursing care plans and by now, I guess you are very well aware of the terms nursing care plan and examples.
If you are a registered nurse, it is mandatory for you to follow and write a nursing care plan.
And even if you are not a registered nurse it is your responsibility to consider writing a nursing care plan.
See also: Responsibility of a Nurse
A nurse, registered or not, must write a nursing plan and follow his/her social responsibility.
Yes, following a nursing care plan is a social responsibility as you should be responsible enough to take proper care of the health of your patients.
Quality patient care is the main focus of the health care providers that is the reason for the growing demand for nursing care plans.
Most importantly, a nursing plan gives instructions to take proper care of a patient.
Also, it works as a source of communication.
In conclusion, one should develop the proper skills in nursing and learn about it in detail to write a nursing care plan. We all need to be diagnosed properly that is why the nursing care plan is of so much significance.
If this article on it’s own didn’t satisfy you enough, check out also these articles of ours:
- Nursing Care Plan for Diabetes
- Nursing Care Plan Hypertension – Full Guide
- Nursing Care Plan for COPD – Full Guide
- Nursing Care Plan for Pneumonia – Full Guide
- The 7 Ethical Principles in Nursing
- What Does PRN Stand For?
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