Nursing Care Plan Resources

Nursing care planning is an essential part of nursing practice that provides a written means of planning patient care and discharge planning based upon nursing diagnosis. Nursing care plans function as a means of communicating patient care needs between members of the nursing team to ensure those needs are met. Written nursing care plans also also serve as a means to document changes in patient's condition, adjustments or additions to nursing diagnosis, as well as patient responses to nursing or medical treatment. Nursing care plans enable nurses to provide a holistic approach to patient needs both while hospitalized and after discharge.

Selected Nursing Care Plan Sites & Books
Nursing care plans must always be individualized for each patient's needs. In a perfect world nurse staffing ratios would allow nurses adequate time to sit at a desk and utilize their expertise to create a complete admission to discharge and home care plan after careful review of patient history, medical records, physical assessment, and applicable nursing diagnosis. We live in an imperfect world however and nurses do not have adequate time to research each patient's history and needs and write a comprehensive plan of care from scratch for each patient during their hectic shift. Understaffed nurses try to keep up, but when time is short mistakes happen more easily and some aspects of the nursing care plan may be omitted. Therefore these "stock" care plans, care plan software, and nursing care plan books are useful as reference tools to help ensure potential problems associated with their particular patient are not overlooked during the nursing care planning process. (Updated 6/23/2006)

Nursing Careplan Guidelines- Fairleigh Dickinson University School of Nursing's Guidelines for writing Care Plans in all Nursing courses.
Care Plan Archives- Searchable free archive of nursing care plans across a broad array of categories compiled from plans submitted to CAREPL-L@LISTSERV.BUFFALO.EDU. Nurses who subscribe to the list can also submit requests for specific plans to the listserv members.
CarePlans.com- This site provides resources for nursing assessment, planning, implementation, and evaluation. The site includes articles, links, and libraries to assist caregivers in the careplanning process.
Comprehensive Nursing Care Plans- Subscription based site that provides interactive instructive samples of nursing care plans addressing problems unique to nursing home residents.
LTCS Books-Provides care plans for long term care, (some free, some paid), books, articles, and news on nursing documentation.
Mosby's Electronic Care Plan Constructor-Providing more than 90 standard plans of care for the most commonly occurring medical-surgical conditions in adults, this interactive CD-ROM helps users eliminate the time spent mechanically constructing plans of care.
Nursing Care Plans: Nursing Diagnosis and Intervention-A collection of 58 nursing diagnosis care plans and 137 medical disorder care plans for patients in the acute care hospital setting. Each care plan defines the disorder and its symptoms, then offers guidelines for performing ongoing assessment and therapeutic interventions.
Paige Patient Instruction Generator-Computer software that provides Nurse Practitioners a means of providing customized after-care instructions from its database of common medical conditions at the click of a button.
RNCentral Care Plans- Provides a moderate number of free to use customizable nursing care plans categorized by impairment or alterations.
Sample Care Plan- Offers one sample ready to use care plan for an MS patient.
Transitional Care Planning- Offers guidance for care planning to help facilitate continuity of care for cancer patients during shifts from one disease stage and/or place of care to another.