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:

1. Dynamic and cyclic
2. Patient centered
3. Goal directed
4. Open and Flexible
5. Problem Oriented
6. Planned
7. Universally accepted
8. Interpersonal and collaborative
9. Holistic
10. 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

1. Assessment
2. Nursing Diagnosis
3. Planning
4. Implementation
5. 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.