Description:

Real-world nursing care for your critically ill patients, right at your fingertips! Delmar's Critical Care Nursing Care Plans, Second Edition, provides detailed information for nurses who care for patients in the critical care unit. All the information needed to develop specific and effective nursing care plans for the most commonly seen disorders is included. Each care plan presents information to guide users in developing comprehensive, individualized nursing care plans based on solid, scientific understanding of the condition and how it affects each of the patient's body systems. Care plans solicit specific patient data and prompt the user to individualize the interventions, consider cultural relevance, and evaluate the patient's individual responses.

Benefits:

• An introductory chapter provides an overview of how to customize a care plan to meet the needs of a specific patient

• Fifty-six of the most significant conditions are addressed in the care plans, including cardiac surgery, intra-aortic balloon pumping, mechanical ventilation, disseminated intravascular coagulation, burns, latex allergies, and multiple organ dysfunction syndrome

• Each section begins with a description of the disorder, anticipated medical treatment, and nursing care, including interventions, rationales, and discharge and maintenance instructions

• Body-system organization helps nurses quickly locate information and disorders

• Up-to-date North American Nursing Diagnosis Association (NANDA) diagnoses are used throughout

• Nursing Interventions Classifications (NIC) and Nursing Outcomes Classifications (NOC) have been added to encourage users to tie care plans into established standards and to ensure that users base their work on the most current research

• Important relationships are presented in flowcharts to give users visual cues and to improve understanding of the basis for care

• A multimedia CD at the back of the book is fully interactive and customizable, and it gives users flexible tools to create and build individualized care plans

More Info:

Arranged by body system, 56 care plans for conditions often seen in the critical care unit list medical care, nursing diagnoses, outcome criteria, and suggested interventions. Originally published as Critical Care Nursing Plans in 1998; the second edition reflects current NANDA taxonomy and adds an introductory chapter on customizing care plans for the individual patient. The CD-ROM contains the care plans in electronic format.

The author uses a comprehensive organ systems approach to organize the units. The units are subdivided into chapters, where common disease states and some treatment modalities are thoroughly addressed. In the final section extensive care plans for patients with multiple problems that do not fit comfortably under the organ system arrangement are provided. In this unit multiple system organ dysfunction syndrome, systemic inflammatory response, transplants and poisoning are addressed. It is notable that in the section the author includes care plans for the patient with epidural analgesia and neuromuscular blockade. These are common treatment modalities for patients in the ICU, but not often addressed separately in other texts. The author has included 4 nice appendices that provide the NANDA list of nursing diagnoses, nursing outcomes and intervention classifications, as well as common abbreviations. A CD-ROM is included to facilitate access and learning. One of the best features of the text is the outline format used to convey not only important interventions, but the rationale for the interventions. It facilitates the ease of use. Included at the end of each chapter are clear flow charts to depict specific pathophysiologic processes of diseases addressed in the care plans. These are superb aids to help develop an in-depth understanding of specific disease/syndrome progression and to provide the nurse with information that may impact further treatment plans. One shortcoming is the relative lack of periodicals used to reference the chapters in the book.