Planning

• Planning


  Formulating client goals (short or long-term) and designing the nursing interventions required to prevent, reduce or eliminate the client's health problems

  
• Nursing Care Plans


  • Provide a course of direction for personalized care tailored to an individual's unique needs
  • Enhance communication, documentation, reimbursement, and continuity of care across the healthcare continuum

  
• Types of Planning


  • Initial Planning
  • Ongoing Planning
  • Discharge Planning
• Initial Planning


  1. Done by the nurse who conducts the admission assessment

  2. The same nurse would create the initial comprehensive plan of care

  
• Ongoing Planning


  1. Done by all the nurses who work with the client

  2. Individualize the initial care plan further as new information is obtained and the client's responses to care are evaluated

  3. Occurs at the beginning of a shift to determine if the client's health status has changed, set priorities, decide which problem to focus on, and coordinate with nurses to ensure that more than one problem can be addressed at each client contact

  
• Discharge Planning


  1. The process of anticipating and planning for needs after discharge

  2. Start when the client is admitted

  3. Involve the client and their family/support persons in planning process

  4. Collaborate with other healthcare professionals to ensure biopsychosocial, cultural, and spiritual needs are met
• Planning Process


  1. Setting priorities

  2. Establishing client goals/desired outcomes

  3. Selecting nursing interventions and activities

  4. Writing individualized nursing interventions on care plans

  
• Setting priorities


  Nurse decides which nursing diagnosis requires attention first
• Establishing client goals/desired outcomes

  • Short-term goals can be met in a relatively short period (within days or less than a week)
  • Long-term goals require more time (several weeks or months)
• Characteristics of a well-stated outcome criteria

  • Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, Time-framed
• Nursing interventions


  • Independent (activities done by nurses using their knowledge and skills)
  • Dependent (activities carried out under the orders or supervision of a licensed physician)
  • Collaborative (actions the nurse carries out in collaboration with other healthcare practitioners)
• Nursing Care Plan (NCP)

  • A formal process that correctly identifies existing needs and recognizes potential needs or risks
  • Provides communication among nurses, their patients, and other healthcare providers to achieve health care outcomes
  • Without the nursing care planning process, the quality and consistency of patient care would be lost
• Planning starts with the first client contact and resumes until the nurse-client relationship ends, preferably when the client is discharged from the health care facility.
• The first step in developing an effective plan of care is to identify the client's problems or concerns.
• S – Specific, The goal should be direct and easy to understand.

  M – Measurable, The goal has measurable outcomes that indicate

  when you've achieved the goal.

  A - Attainable, The goal should be achievable for your skills, resources

  and capabilities.

  R - Realistic, The goal supports the broader needs of the ward,

  department and organization.

  T - Time- framed, There's a clear due date by when the goal needs to

  be achieved.