How to Prioritize Care When Writing a Care Plan

Writing a good care plan is very similar to performing a mental triage of the patient's condition and needs. Care plans should focus on goals that are attainable and measurable. Well-defined measurements allow the nurse or health care provider and the patient to see where they are making progress and where changes in treatment are needed. Prioritizing care is essential to effective treatment and measurement of goals, particularly since many symptoms may resolve themselves when the root cause has been dealt with.

Instructions

• 1

  Deal with urgent care needs or potentially life-threatening situations first. For instance, if the patient is non-compliant with a medication and this could cause seizures or heart or kidney failure or something equally life-threatening, focus your care plan on increasing the patient's compliance with the medication regimen. The patient having an IV or PICC line, being hooked up to monitors, open wounds or decubitus ulcers, and post-surgical care are all situations that should hold high priority in the care plan.

• 2

  Address harmful but not necessarily life-threatening situations after you've written a care plan for the most serious needs. Frequent falls or high risk of falling, difficulty swallowing, highly impaired skin integrity and using oxygen (especially if they still smoke) would all fall in this category of importance in the care plan and should definitely be included.

• 3

  Focus the next part of the care plan on factors that affect the patient's physical health and mobility. Poor nutrition, unhealthy weight gain/loss, excessive smoking or alcohol use or engaging in other activities or behaviors that can adversely affect the patient's health should be mentioned. Note that this level of care planning will most likely have interventions focusing on patient education and training and attainable, measurable goals set for behavior modification.

• 4

  Identify areas where the patient's social, emotional and spiritual needs are not being met. These aspects of the patient's well-being are not as critical as the life-threatening issues. However, a person's ability to recover from serious illness or make a positive adjustment to a debilitating injury depend heavily on their social, emotional and spiritual well-being -- so ignoring these areas in the care plan is not advised. Ensuring the patient maintains social connections, providing means of social and spiritual support, and addressing emotional conditions like depression or anxiety would all be considered in this area of the care plan.