Introduction
The Manual of Psychiatric Nursing Care Plans is intended as a resource in planning for each client’s care. Because each client is a person with a unique background and a particular set of behaviors, problems, strengths, needs, and goals, each client needs an individual plan of nursing care. The care plans that follow provide information concerning clients’ behaviors and suggestions regarding nursing care, including nursing diagnoses, that are most likely to be used in writing an individual client’s care plan.
For each diagnosis addressed in the following care plans, suggestions are given for the following:
Assessment data commonly encountered with behaviors or problems addressed in the care plan.
Expected outcomes for three time frames: immediate (as early as possible in the client’s stay); stabilization (to be achieved before discharge from an acute care setting); and community (following discharge, when the client remains stable with the support of the community). Immediate time frames are provided in the care plans as examples only; actual time frames need to be determined by the nurse as he or she performs nursing assessment and ongoing evaluation of care.
Nursing interventions often effective in addressing the nursing diagnosis, to be selected for implementation as appropriate for a given client’s situation. Care plans may contain more interventions than needed for a particular client’s situation or alternative approaches; alternatively, the individual client’s plan of care may need additional interventions as is developed.
Rationale for each intervention, provided as a learning tool to help in understanding the intervention and as an aid in selecting the appropriate interventions for an individual care plan.
Because of individual differences and because the care plans in this Manual are based primarily on behaviors (as opposed to psychiatric diagnoses), a plan from this Manual should not be copied verbatim for an individual client’s plan of care. Some care plans contain seemingly contradictory problems that call for different approaches or suggest different possible approaches for the same problem. Remember that the plans in the Manual are intended as resources from which to glean appropriate information and suggestions for use in each client’s case.
This Manual focuses primarily on the client’s behavior, which enables the nurse to plan care using nursing diagnoses formulated on the basis of nursing assessment, rather than depending on a psychiatric diagnosis, or in the absence of a specified psychiatric diagnosis. This is important for several reasons: not all clients with emotional problems are found in psychiatric settings or carry a psychiatric diagnosis; psychiatric diagnoses are not always immediately determined; and most important, good nursing care must involve seeing the client holistically, using a nursing framework, rather than solely in terms of a psychiatric diagnosis.
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