What is a nursing process ?
Nursing process is a systematic, rational method of planning and providing individualized nursing care.
The purpose of nursing process
- To identify client’s health status, actual or potential healthcare problems or need.
- To establish plans to meet the identified needs and to deliver specific interventions to meet those needs.
- It provides a framework in which to practice nursing.
Characteristics of a nursing process:
- Dynamic and cyclic
- Patient centered
- Goal directed
- Open and Flexible
- Problem Oriented
- Planned
- Universally accepted
- Interpersonal and collaborative
- Holistic
- Systematic
Benefits of Nursing Process
- Improves the quality of care that the client receives
- Ensures a high level of client participation together with continuous evaluation designed to meet the client’s unique needs
- Enables nurses to use time and resources efficiently to both their own and their client’s benefit
The steps of the Nursing Process
- Assessment
- Nursing Diagnosis
- Planning
- Implementation
- Evaluation
1- Nursing Assessment
- The process of collecting, validating and recording data about a client’s health status.
- Phase which identifies patient’s strengths and limitations and is done continuously throughout the nursing process.
2- Nursing Diagnosis
- In this phase the nurse sort, clusters and analyzes data.
- These questions could serve as guidelines:
- What are the actual and potential health problems for which the client needs nursing assistance?
- What factors contributed to this problem?
- Nursing diagnoses are identified through actual and potential health problems or responses to life processes.
Types of nursing diagnosis:
It can be ACTUAL, POTENTIAL or WELLNESS DIAGNOSIS :
- ACTUAL – identifies an occurring health problem
- POTENTIAL – identifies a high risk health problem
- WELLNESS‐ focused on promoting or enhancing a patient’s level of wellness.
3- Planning
- Planning expected outcomes to resolve or minimize the identified problems of the client.
- In collaboration with the client, the nurse develops specific nursing intervention for each nursing diagnosis.
4- Implementation
- Also called intervention; putting the nursing care plan into action to achieve goals and outcomes
- As you implement your plan, you continue to assess your patient’s responses and modify plan as needed.
- Care done should always be documented.
5- Evaluation
- Assessing the client’s response to nursing interventions and then comparing the response to the goals or outcome criteria written in the planning phase.