Care plans
Nursing care plans by condition.
NANDA diagnoses, NOC outcomes, NIC interventions. Framed the way a clinical instructor walks you through it the first time. Every care plan goes through clinician review.
How to use these
A care plan is the bridge between an assessment and the interventions you'll do at the bedside. NANDA gives you the diagnosis vocabulary. NOC tells you what good outcomes look like. NIC tells you what nursing interventions are evidence-based for that diagnosis. Together they are the SOAP- style structure your school is teaching.
Pull the care plan that matches your patient. Read it through once. Then rewrite it in your own words. The point of writing care plans in school is the writing, not the reading. These are scaffolds, not shortcuts.
Every care plan is reviewed by Jonathan Kim, DO for clinical accuracy.
The full library
Every care plan (194)
General (37)
11 Mechanical Ventilation & Endotracheal Intubation Nursing Care Plans and Management
A ventilated patient cannot protect their own airway, cannot tell you when something feels wrong, and can decompensate fast when a tube migrates, a setting dr…
12 Surgery (Perioperative Client) Nursing Care Plans
Surgery is controlled trauma. You take a patient who is anxious and awake, hand them to anesthesia, and get them back unable to protect their own airway, regu…
3 Dying Child Nursing Care Plans
Caring for a dying child is among the hardest work a nurse does, and the family is your patient too. The child is totally dependent and the illness reaches th…
4 End-of-Life Care (Hospice Care) Nursing Care Plans
The dying patient is still your patient, and so is the family at the bedside. Hospice care shifts the goal from cure to comfort: control symptoms, protect dig…
4 Hospitalized Child Nursing Care Plans
A hospital admission is a crisis for the whole family, not just the child. Whether it is a short stay, a followup checkup, surgery, or a repeat admission for …
4 TPN Feeding (Total Parenteral Nutrition) Nursing Care Plan
When the gut cannot be used, TPN keeps the patient fed through a central vein, and it carries risk in both directions. Push it too fast and you get hyperglyce…
Activity Intolerance & Generalized Weakness Nursing Diagnosis & Care Plan
Activity intolerance is one of the most common problems you will manage on any floor. The client cannot finish the tasks of daily life because the body cannot…
Acute Confusion (Delirium) Nursing Diagnosis & Care Plan
Acute confusion is a clinical emergency that hides in plain sight. The change in mental status is almost always a symptom of something else (infection, a drug…
Acute Pain Nursing Diagnosis & Nursing Care Plan
Pain is why most of your patients are in the bed. Assess it honestly, treat it before it spikes, and reassess like it matters. This plan covers the assessment…
Caregiver Role Strain & Family Caregiver Support Systems Nursing Diagnosis & Care Plan
The caregiver is your second patient, and usually the one nobody is watching. Burned-out caregivers miss medications, miss warning signs, and end up in your u…
Chronic Pain (Pain Management) Nursing Diagnosis & Care Plan
Chronic pain is the patient whose workup is clean but who still hurts every shift. Your job is not to cure it. It is to control it, protect function, and keep…
Constipation Nursing Diagnosis & Care Plan
Constipation looks minor until it isn't. Left alone it builds to fecal impaction, incontinence, hemorrhoids, rectal prolapse, and anal fissure, and on the flo…
Diarrhea Nursing Diagnosis & Care Plan
Diarrhea on the floor is rarely just loose stool. It is fluid and electrolytes walking out the door, skin breaking down at the perineum, nutrition slipping, a…
Disturbed Body Image & Self-Esteem Nursing Diagnosis & Care Plans
Body image disturbance shows up at the bedside before the patient ever says a word. It is the new ostomate who will not look at the stoma, the mastectomy pati…
Disturbed Thought Processes (Cognitive Impairment) Nursing Diagnosis and Care Plan
A confused client is a safety problem first and a communication problem second. Cognitive impairment alters perception and thinking enough to interfere with d…
Fatigue & Lethargy Nursing Diagnosis & Care Plans
Fatigue is the symptom patients struggle to name, so they reach for 'tired,' 'drained,' 'wiped out.' Your job is to separate ordinary tiredness from true fati…
Fever (Pyrexia) Nursing Diagnosis & Care Plan
A fever is a sign, not a diagnosis. Your job is to confirm it with a real measurement, find what is driving it, keep the patient hydrated and comfortable, and…
Geriatric Nursing Care Plans: 10 Nursing Diagnosis for Older People
Older adults break the rules you learned on younger patients. A normal temperature can be septic. A clear chest can still be pneumonia. A new bout of confusio…
Grieving & Loss Nursing Diagnosis & Care Plan
You will sit with grieving patients and families more often than you expect, and most of the time they do not need you to fix anything. They need a steady pre…
Hyperthermia & Heat-Related Illnesses Nursing Diagnosis & Care Plan
Hyperthermia is a thermoregulation failure, not a fever, and that distinction changes everything you do. The hypothalamus is not resetting the setpoint; the b…
Hypothermia & Cold Injuries Nursing Care Plan and Management
Cold kills quietly. By the time a hypothermic patient stops shivering and looks calm, they are getting worse, not better. Your job is narrow and urgent: stop …
Imbalanced Nutrition Nursing Diagnosis & Care Plans
Nutrition is not a soft side issue on the floor. A malnourished patient heals slower, catches more infections, stays longer, and dies more often. Whether the …
Impaired Gas Exchange Nursing Diagnosis & Care Plan
Impaired gas exchange means oxygen is not getting into the blood, carbon dioxide is not getting out, or both. You usually catch it in behavior before the numb…
Impaired Physical Mobility & Immobility Nursing Diagnosis & Care Plans
Immobility is never just a movement problem. Leave a patient flat and deconditioning starts within days: muscle wastes, skin breaks down over the sacrum and h…
Impaired Swallowing (Dysphagia) Nursing Diagnosis & Care Plan
Dysphagia puts the airway at risk every time the client tries to eat or drink. Your job is to catch the swallow that isn't safe before food ends up in the lun…
Impaired Tissue Perfusion & Ischemia Nursing Diagnosis & Care Plans
Perfusion is the whole game. When arterial flow drops, cells stop getting oxygen and nutrients, and tissue starts to die. Catch the early signs (diminished pu…
Ineffective Airway Clearance & Coughing Nursing Diagnosis & Care Plans
A patient who cannot clear their own secretions is one suction-delay away from a mucus plug, atelectasis, and pneumonia. Coughing is the body's main defense, …
Ineffective Breathing Pattern (Dyspnea) Nursing Diagnosis & Care Plans
Ineffective breathing pattern is the state in which the rate, depth, timing, rhythm, or pattern of breathing fails to keep the patient adequately ventilated. …
Insomnia & Sleep Deprivation Nursing Diagnosis & Care Plans
Insomnia means the client cannot fall asleep or cannot stay asleep. Sleep deprivation means they are not getting enough sleep, period. You will see both on th…
Knowledge Deficit & Patient Education Nursing Diagnosis & Care Plans
A fair share of the readmissions you see start with a patient who walked out not understanding their meds, their diet, or the warning signs that should have s…
Nausea & Vomiting Nursing Diagnosis & Care Plan
Nausea and vomiting wreck a patient's comfort fast, and they tip you off to something bigger going on underneath. Your job is to find the cause, control the s…
Nursing Diagnosis Guide: Complete List & Tutorial
The nursing diagnosis is where you stop describing the disease and start naming what nursing can actually do about it. The physician owns the medical diagnosi…
Prolonged Bed Rest Care Plans: 8 Nursing Diagnosis
Bed rest is a treatment with a long list of side effects. You order it to lower metabolic demand and let the body recover, but every day flat in bed costs the…
Risk for Falls (Fall Risk & Prevention) Nursing Diagnosis & Care Plan
A fall on your unit is rarely just a fall. It is a hip fracture, a head bleed, a patient who never gets back to baseline, and a death investigation. Falls are…
Risk for Infection (Infection Control) Nursing Diagnosis & Care Plan
Risk for Infection is the diagnosis you carry on almost every patient. A surgical wound, a central line, a Foley, an immunosuppressed host: each one hands a p…
Risk for Injury Nursing Diagnosis and Care Plan
Risk for Injury is the diagnosis you carry on the patients who cannot protect themselves: the confused postop, the patient on five sedating drugs, the toddler…
Self-Care Deficit & Activities of Daily Living (ADLs) Nursing Care Diagnosis & Care Plan
Self-care deficit is the gap between what a patient needs done for daily living and what they can do for themselves. On the floor you see it constantly: the s…
Cardiac (18)
14 Stroke (CVA) Nursing Diagnosis and Nursing Care Plans
A stroke is brain tissue dying by the minute. Your job at the bedside is to catch the deficit early, protect the airway and the swallow, keep intracranial pre…
4 Acute Rheumatic Fever Nursing Care Plans
Acute rheumatic fever is what an untreated strep throat can turn into, and the part that matters long term is the heart. Joints hurt and then recover, but car…
4 Cardiac Catheterization Nursing Care Plans and Management
Most of the work in cardiac catheterization happens after the patient leaves the cath lab. The catheter punctures a major vessel, usually the femoral, so your…
5 Hypovolemic Shock Nursing Care Plans
Hypovolemic shock is a race against falling perfusion. Once intravascular volume drops far enough, venous return, ventricular filling, stroke volume, and card…
5 Pacemaker Therapy Nursing Care Plans
Your pacemaker patient is on telemetry for a reason. You are watching for capture, sensing, and the early signs that the device or the insertion site is in tr…
6 Cardiac Arrhythmias Nursing Care Plans and Management
Arrhythmias run the full range, from benign and asymptomatic to ventricular fibrillation that needs resuscitation in the next minute. On the floor your job is…
6 Congenital Heart Disease Nursing Care Plans
These kids are working harder to do less. A congenital defect means blood is shunting the wrong way, mixing oxygenated with deoxygenated, or running into a na…
7 Anaphylactic Shock Nursing Care Plans
Anaphylaxis kills fast when it kills, and it does it two ways at once: the airway swells shut while the blood pressure drops out from under the patient. Minut…
8 Cardiogenic Shock Nursing Diagnosis and Care Plans
The pump has failed. The heart cannot move enough blood to meet the body's demands even though the tank is full, so every organ downstream starts to starve. I…
8 Myocardial Infarction (Heart Attack) Nursing Care Plans
An MI is heart muscle dying for lack of oxygen, and the clock is the enemy. Almost half of sudden deaths from MI happen before the patient ever reaches the ho…
9 Deep Vein Thrombosis Nursing Care Plans
A DVT is dangerous because of what it does next. The clot sitting in the calf or thigh is rarely the emergency. The emergency is the piece that breaks loose, …
Aortic Aneurysm Nursing Care Plan
An aortic aneurysm is a weak, ballooning section of the aorta that grows until it tears or ruptures. Most are silent until that moment, so your value at the b…
Chest Pain (Angina) Nursing Care Plan and Diagnosis
Angina is myocardial ischemia talking. It is not its own disease, it is the chest telling you the heart muscle is not getting enough oxygen, usually from coro…
Decreased Cardiac Output Nursing Diagnosis & Care Plan
The heart is not moving enough blood to meet the body's demands. Output falls, perfusion drops, and the organs downstream start to fail. Your job is to catch …
Disseminated Intravascular Coagulation Nursing Care Plans
DIC kills fast. The clotting cascade fires out of control, throwing microthrombi that starve organs while the body burns through platelets and clotting factor…
Heart Failure Nursing Care Plans: 12 Nursing Diagnosis
The heart failure patient lives or dies by trends, not single numbers. A 3-pound overnight weight gain, a new S3, crackles creeping up the lung fields, noctur…
Hypertension Nursing Diagnosis & Care Plans
Most hypertensive patients feel fine, and that is the problem. They stay asymptomatic for years while pressure quietly damages the heart, kidneys, retinas, an…
Preeclampsia and Gestational Hypertensive Disorders Nursing Care Plans and Management
Preeclampsia kills mothers and babies when it is caught late. The whole job on this patient is to catch the rise before it turns into a seizure, a stroke, a H…
Endocrine (11)
11 Gestational Diabetes Mellitus Nursing Care Plans
Gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) is glucose intolerance that shows up during pregnancy. In true GDM, glucose usually returns to normal by 6 weeks postpartu…
3 Diabetes Insipidus Nursing Care Plans
The problem in diabetes insipidus (DI) is water, not sugar. The patient cannot concentrate urine, so they dump large volumes of pale, dilute urine and drink c…
4 Diabetic Ketoacidosis and HHNS Nursing Care Plans
DKA and HHNS are insulin-deficiency emergencies, and both land on your unit dehydrated, hyperglycemic, and circling the drain if you sit on them. The work is …
6 Hypothyroidism (Myxedema) Nursing Care Plans
Hypothyroidism is the body running slow on too little thyroid hormone. Metabolism, heart rate, GI motility, and mental processing all drag, and the patient is…
6 Thyroidectomy Nursing Care Plans
Thyroidectomy is not a common surgery, but when your patient comes back from one, the first 24 hours are where you earn your pay. The neck is a tight box. Ede…
8 Hyperthyroidism Nursing Care Plans
Hyperthyroidism is the body running hot on too much thyroid hormone. Metabolism, heart rate, and the nervous system are all dialed up, and your job on the flo…
Addison's Disease Nursing Care Plans
The danger with Addison's disease is the crisis. The adrenal cortex is not making enough cortisol and aldosterone, so the patient cannot mount a stress respon…
Cushing's Disease Nursing Care Plan
Cushing's disease is too much cortisol for too long, and the damage shows up in almost every system. The patient holds sodium and water and runs hypertensive …
Diabetes Mellitus Nursing Care Plans: 20 Nursing Diagnosis
Diabetes is the patient you will see on every unit, in every specialty, at every age. Your job rarely starts and stops with the glucose number on the meter. Y…
Obesity Nursing Diagnosis & Care Plan
Obesity is rarely the reason your patient is admitted, but it shapes almost everything you do for them: airway and ventilation, skin integrity, drug dosing, m…
Risk for Unstable Blood Glucose Levels (Hyperglycemia & Hypoglycemia) Nursing Diagnosis & Care Plan
Unstable glucose shows up on every unit, not just endocrine. Your job is to catch the swing before it turns into a code: treat hypoglycemia fast, bring down t…
Electrolyte Metabolic (8)
Fluid Volume Deficit (Dehydration & Hypovolemia) Nursing Diagnosis & Care Plan
A patient who is losing more fluid than they take in is on a clock. Catch it early and you replace volume and fix the cause. Miss it and you are chasing hypov…
Fluid Volume Excess (Hypervolemia) Nursing Diagnosis & Care Plan
Fluid volume excess is what you watch for on every heart failure, renal, and post-transfusion patient. The lungs fill, the neck veins stand up, the weight cli…
Hypercalcemia and Hypocalcemia (Calcium Imbalances) Nursing Care Plans
Calcium swings hit the heart and the neuromuscular system, and both ends can kill. High calcium slows the gut and the heart toward bradycardia and arrest; low…
Hyperkalemia & Hypokalemia Nursing Care Plans
Potassium is the electrolyte that stops hearts. Both directions are emergencies: high potassium drives the heart toward fibrillation and arrest, low potassium…
Hypermagnesemia & Hypomagnesemia (Magnesium Imbalances) Nursing Care Plans
Magnesium swings hit the neuromuscular junction and the heart. Too much depresses everything (reflexes drop, breathing slows, the rhythm blocks down toward ar…
Hypernatremia & Hyponatremia (Sodium Imbalances) Nursing Care Plans
Sodium sets the tone in the extracellular space, and the brain pays the price when it moves. High sodium pulls water out of cells and shrinks the brain; low s…
Metabolic Acidosis Nursing Care Plan and Management
Metabolic acidosis is acid winning over base: too much hydrogen, not enough bicarbonate. The body answers by blowing off CO2 (the deep, hungry Kussmaul breath…
Metabolic Alkalosis Nursing Care Plan and Management
Metabolic alkalosis is a high blood pH (above 7.45) driven by excess bicarbonate (HCO3-) or loss of acid. On the floor you see it most often after prolonged v…
Gastrointestinal (18)
2 Hemorrhoids Nursing Care Plans
Hemorrhoids are varicose veins in the rectum, and they hurt far out of proportion to how minor they sound. Internal hemorrhoids come from dilation of the supe…
4 Appendectomy (Appendicitis) Nursing Care Plans
Appendectomy is the surgical removal of an inflamed appendix (appendicitis). Most are done laparoscopically, which means less postoperative pain, earlier soli…
4 Peptic Ulcer Disease Nursing Care Plans
Peptic ulcer patients come in with epigastric burning and a story that points to gastric or duodenal disease. Your priorities are pain relief, nutrition and f…
5 Pressure Injuries (Bedsores) Nursing Care Plans
Pressure injuries start the moment a patient stops moving and nobody moves them. Skin and soft tissue get compressed between a bony prominence and a hard surf…
6 Hepatitis Nursing Care Plans
Hepatitis is widespread inflammation of the liver with degeneration and necrosis of liver cells. It comes from bacterial invasion, physical or toxic chemical …
6 Pancreatitis Nursing Care Plans
Pancreatitis patients arrive in pain that is hard to touch, often dehydrated, sometimes circling the drain toward shock. Your job on the floor is pain control…
7 Ileostomy and Colostomy Nursing Care Plans
An ostomy patient lives or dies by peristomal skin and a well-fit pouch. Get the appliance right and most of the complications you fear never start. Your job …
8 Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease (GERD) Nursing Care Plans
GERD is acid that keeps going the wrong way. Stomach or duodenal contents back up through the lower esophageal sphincter (LES) into the esophagus, without bel…
8 Liver Cirrhosis (Hepatic Cirrhosis) Nursing Care Plans
Cirrhosis is the end of the road for a liver that has been injured long enough. Scar tissue replaces functioning hepatic cells, blood and lymph flow back up, …
9 Peritonitis Nursing Care Plans
Peritonitis is a surgical emergency wearing a medical mask. The peritoneum is inflamed, the gut is shutting down, and septic shock is one missed assessment aw…
Bowel Incontinence (Fecal Incontinence) Nursing Diagnosis & Care Plan
Bowel incontinence is one of the most underreported problems you will manage, and patients rarely bring it up first. This guide covers assessment, diagnosis, …
Cholecystectomy Nursing Care Plans
Your postop cholecystectomy patient lives or dies on three things: they breathe deep despite the incision pain, their drainage stays the color it should, and …
Cholecystitis and Cholelithiasis Nursing Care Plans
A patient doubled over with right upper quadrant pain after a fatty meal is the classic picture. Your job is to control that pain, keep them hydrated through …
Gastroenteritis Nursing Care Plans
Gastroenteritis is mostly a fluid problem wearing a GI costume. The patient is losing water and electrolytes faster than they can take them in, so your priori…
Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) Nursing Care Plans
IBD comes to you in two forms, and the distinction drives the whole plan. Ulcerative colitis stays in the colon and rectum, runs continuous in 30% to 40% of p…
Intussusception Nursing Care Plans
Intussusception is a time emergency. One segment of bowel telescopes into the next, blood flow to the trapped wall gets choked off, and colicky pain can progr…
Subtotal Gastrectomy Nursing Care Plan
Subtotal gastrectomy (gastric resection) removes the part of the stomach damaged by hemorrhage, intractable ulcers, a failing lower esophageal sphincter, pylo…
Umbilical and Inguinal Hernia Nursing Care Plans
A hernia is abdominal contents pushing through a weak spot in the muscle wall. An umbilical hernia is intestine and omentum bulging through the umbilical ring…
Immune (9)
11 AIDS (HIV Positive) Nursing Care Plans
AIDS is what HIV does to an immune system left untreated: it strips out the CD4+ helper T cells until ordinary organisms turn lethal. Most of your work happen…
Hyperbilirubinemia (Neonatal Jaundice) Nursing Care Plans
Hyperbilirubinemia is a high serum bilirubin from hemolysis of RBCs and reabsorption of unconjugated bilirubin from the small intestine. The newborn liver is …
Leukemia Nursing Care Plans
Leukemia is a malignant proliferation of white blood cell precursors in bone marrow or lymph tissue, with accumulation in peripheral blood, marrow, and body t…
Lymphoma Nursing Care Plans
Lymphoma is a cancer of the lymphocytes, the white blood cells that run the immune system. It covers distinct entities defined by clinical, histologic, immuno…
Risk for Bleeding (Hemophilia) Nursing Diagnosis & Care Plan
When disease or its treatment disrupts the mechanisms that maintain hemostasis, a client is at risk for bleeding. Hemophilia interferes with the genetic expre…
Sepsis (Septicemia) Nursing Care Plans
Sepsis is an infection that went systemic and started shutting organs down. It is a medical emergency, and the clock matters: delayed antibiotics and delayed …
Seven Hemophilia Nursing Care Plans
Hemophilia patients do not bleed faster, they bleed longer. A missing clotting factor means a minor cut keeps oozing and a bumped joint keeps filling. The ble…
Sickle Cell Anemia Nursing Care Plans
A patient in sickle cell crisis is in pain that opioids barely touch, and your job is to break the cycle driving it: deoxygenated cells sickling, jamming smal…
Systemic Lupus Erythematosus Nursing Care Plans
Lupus is an autoimmune disease that can hit almost any system, so your patient may come in for a rash and a sore wrist or for failing kidneys. The immune syst…
Integumentary (5)
Burn Injury Nursing Care Plans
A major burn hits every system at once. You are managing airway, fluid shifts, an open wound the size of the patient, a hypermetabolic engine, and a person wh…
Dermatitis Nursing Care Plan
Dermatitis is inflamed skin: red, itchy, irritated. It shows up from allergens, irritants, genetics, or autoimmune disease, and it runs in forms from seborrhe…
Herpes Zoster (Shingles) Nursing Care Plan
Shingles is reactivated varicella zoster virus (VZV), the same virus behind chickenpox. After chickenpox resolves, VZV stays dormant in the spinal nerve gangl…
Impaired Tissue/Skin Integrity (Wound Care) Nursing Diagnosis & Care Plans
Skin is the patient's first barrier, and when it breaks you are managing infection risk, pain, nutrition, and the slow work of healing all at once. This guide…
Mpox (Monkeypox) Nursing Care Plans
Mpox patients land on your unit in isolation, in pain, and scared of what the rash means. Your job is symptom control, secondary-infection prevention, and air…
Newborn (12)
8 Postpartum Hemorrhage Nursing Care Plans
Postpartum hemorrhage (PPH) is a cumulative blood loss of 1,000 mL or more with signs or symptoms of hypovolemia within 24 hours of birth, regardless of deliv…
Abortion (Termination of Pregnancy) Nursing Care Plans
Spontaneous or chosen, your patient arrives bleeding, cramping, scared, and often grieving a decision nobody around her knows about. Keep her hemodynamically …
Bleeding in Pregnancy (Prenatal Hemorrhage) Nursing Care Plans
Any vaginal bleeding in pregnancy is abnormal, potentially serious, and frightening to the patient. Treat it that way from the first report. About 25% of preg…
Cervical Insufficiency (Incompetent Cervix) Nursing Care Plans
Cervical insufficiency means the cervix dilates too early and cannot hold the fetus to term. The dilation is usually painless, so the first sign is often a pi…
Cesarean Birth Nursing Care Plans (C-Section)
Cesarean birth is the delivery of a neonate through a surgical incision in the abdomen and uterus. Nursing literature uses 'cesarean birth' rather than 'cesar…
Neonatal Sepsis Nursing Care Plans
A septic neonate rarely announces itself. You get temperature instability, poor feeding, a baby that is just 'not right.' By the time blood pressure drops, yo…
Perinatal Loss (Miscarriage, Stillbirth, Neonatal Death) Nursing Care Plans
When a pregnancy ends in the death of a fetus or neonate, the loss is sudden and devastating, and the parents in front of you are in crisis. Your job is not t…
Placenta Previa Nursing Care Plans
Painless, bright red vaginal bleeding in the third trimester is placenta previa until you prove otherwise. The placenta has implanted in the lower uterine seg…
Placental Abruption Nursing Care Plans
Bleeding with abdominal or low back pain, a firm or boardlike uterus, and frequent cramping contractions is placental abruption until proven otherwise. The pl…
Preterm Labor Nursing Care Plans
Preterm labor is regular uterine contractions after 20 weeks and before 37 weeks that drive cervical change, often presenting with dilation of 2 cm or more. P…
Puerperal & Postpartum Infections Nursing Care Plans
A postpartum fever is an infection until you prove otherwise. Puerperal infection is a reproductive tract infection in the 28 days after childbirth or abortio…
Substance Abuse in Pregnancy Nursing Care Plans
The pregnant patient with a substance use disorder often shows up late, if she shows up at all. She is afraid that disclosing her use will get her reported an…
Musculoskeletal (11)
3 Osteogenic Sarcoma (Osteosarcoma) Nursing Care Plans
Most of your osteosarcoma patients are kids and young adults, and they arrive scared. The disease is aggressive, the treatment is brutal, and the care plan ha…
4 Scoliosis Nursing Care Plans
Most of your scoliosis patients are adolescents, often girls, facing bracing or surgery and the body-image fallout that comes with both. Your work centers on …
5 Osteoporosis Nursing Care Plans
Osteoporosis is silent until a bone breaks. By the time your patient is in front of you with a hip or vertebral fracture, the disease has been working for yea…
6 Rheumatoid Arthritis Nursing Care Plans
Your RA patient is dealing with pain, stiff joints, fatigue, and the weight of a chronic disease that flares without warning. Your job is to control the pain,…
6 Total Joint (Knee, Hip) Replacement Nursing Care Plans
Your post-op total joint patient needs four things from you: pain controlled, the incision clean and infection-free, the prosthesis protected from dislocation…
Amputation Nursing Care Plans
Losing a limb is a wound and a grief at the same time, and you manage both. After amputation your job is to protect the stump, keep it perfusing and infection…
Congenital Hip Dysplasia Nursing Care Plans
Caught early, hip dysplasia corrects well. Caught late, it means surgery, casts, and a child who walks with a limp. Your work centers on keeping the reduction…
Fracture Nursing Care Plans
A fracture is a broken bone. It happens when the force on the bone exceeds what the bone can take, most often from car accidents, falls, or sports injuries. L…
Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis Nursing Care Plans
JRA is a chronic disease you manage in flares, not a problem you fix once. Your job is to control inflammation, stay ahead of the pain, protect the joints fro…
Laminectomy (Disc Surgery) Nursing Care Plans
After a laminectomy your patient has an unstable back, a fresh incision near the spinal cord, and a long recovery ahead. Your job is to protect perfusion and …
Osteoarthritis Nursing Care Plans
Osteoarthritis is the arthritis you will see most on the floor. It is progressive degeneration of articular cartilage in synovial joints, and it hits the weig…
Neurological (12)
12 Parkinson's Disease Nursing Care Plans
Parkinson's disease is a slow, relentless loss of dopamine, and it does not come back. Your job is to keep the patient moving and independent as long as the d…
12 Spinal Cord Injury Nursing Care Plans
Spinal cord injury changes everything below the level of the lesion: breathing, movement, sensation, bladder, bowel, and blood pressure regulation. Your work …
15 Alzheimer's Disease and Dementia Nursing Care Plans
Alzheimer's patients land on your unit confused, agitated, and unable to tell you what they need. Your job is to keep them safe, preserve what function remain…
4 Hydrocephalus Nursing Care Plans
Hydrocephalus is rising intracranial pressure from cerebrospinal fluid that has nowhere to go. Your job is to catch the pressure climbing before it damages th…
5 Febrile Seizure Nursing Care Plans
A febrile seizure terrifies the parents and is usually benign. Your job is to protect the airway, control the fever, keep the child from getting hurt, and sen…
7 Cerebral Palsy Nursing Care Plans
Cerebral palsy is what you manage long-term, not what you cure. Your job on the floor is mobility, nutrition, communication, safety, and keeping the family fu…
7 Multiple Sclerosis Nursing Care Plans
Multiple sclerosis shows up as fatigue that does not match the effort, a bladder that will not cooperate, spasticity, and a young patient watching their own b…
8 Guillain-Barre Syndrome Nursing Care Plans
Guillain-Barre is ascending paralysis, and the weakness climbs. Your real job is to stay ahead of the diaphragm: weakness that starts in the feet can reach th…
8 Meningitis Nursing Care Plans
Meningitis can take a child from headache to herniation fast. Your job is to recognize it early, get antibiotics started without delay, hold intracranial pres…
8 Spina Bifida Nursing Care Plans
Your spina bifida patient is usually an infant, and your job sorts into a handful of fronts: protect the open sac before surgery, prevent infection, manage a …
Chronic Confusion (Dementia) Nursing Diagnosis & Care Plan
Caring for a client with chronic confusion comes down to safety, slowing functional decline, and keeping the caregiver standing. This guide covers assessment,…
Seizure Disorder Nursing Care Plans
A seizure is a few minutes of chaos that you have to manage without panicking. Your job is to keep the patient from getting hurt, protect the airway, time wha…
Oncology (4)
8 Lung Cancer Nursing Care Plans
Your lung cancer patient is fighting on two fronts at once: a failing airway and a failing morale. The tumor steals lung tissue, narrows bronchi, collapses lo…
Brain Tumor Nursing Care Plans
Most pediatric brain tumors sit at the midline, in the brainstem or cerebellum, so they raise intracranial pressure early and the first clues are easy to miss…
Cancer Nursing Care Plans
Cancer patients fill your assignment with overlapping problems at once: pain, nausea, neutropenia, a failing appetite, and a person trying to process a diagno…
Mastectomy Nursing Care Plans
Your mastectomy patient comes back from the OR with a drain or two, a pressure dressing, and an arm you have to protect for the rest of their life. The affect…
Pediatric (4)
2 Cryptorchidism (Undescended Testes) Nursing Care Plans
Most of your work in cryptorchidism happens around the orchiopexy: prep the family, protect the incision afterward, and manage a parent's anxiety about fertil…
5 Croup Nursing Care Plans
Croup is the barking cough that walks through your door at 2 a.m. with a scared kid and scared parents. Your job is to keep the airway open, the oxygen up, an…
5 Kawasaki Disease Nursing Care Plans
The thing that kills in Kawasaki disease is the heart, not the fever. Watch the coronary arteries, get IV immunoglobulin in within 10 days, and manage a miser…
Cleft Lip and Cleft Palate Nursing Care Plan
Two problems land in your lap the moment a cleft baby arrives. The infant cannot generate enough suction to feed, and once the defect is repaired you are guar…
Mental Health (12)
3 Child Abuse and Neglect Nursing Care Plans
You are legally and morally obligated to identify a child who may be maltreated and to report it. Miss it and the child goes back to the same environment. Thi…
4 Bipolar Disorders Nursing Care Plans
A manic patient will exhaust himself to death if you let him. He does not feel hunger, thirst, or fatigue, he gives away his money, he provokes everyone on th…
6 Suicidal Ideation (Hopelessness & Impaired Coping) Nursing Care Plans
Take every suicide threat and every attempt seriously, no exceptions. Your job is to keep the patient alive through the crisis, assess risk honestly, remove t…
8 Eating Disorders: Anorexia & Bulimia Nervosa Nursing Care Plans
Anorexia nervosa is starvation driven by a distorted body image and a morbid fear of obesity. The patient keeps their weight far below normal for age and heig…
Alcohol Withdrawal Nursing Care Plans
Alcohol withdrawal syndrome (AWS) hits when someone with alcohol use disorder abruptly stops or cuts back. It runs from mild shakiness to delirium tremens, an…
Anxiety & Fear Nursing Diagnosis & Care Plan
Anxiety walks into every unit you will ever work. Your job is to read its level, stay calm enough to lower the patient's, and give them concrete tools (assess…
Anxiety and Panic Disorders Nursing Care Plans
An anxious or panicking patient pulls your own anxiety up with them. Your job is to read their level, stay calm enough to bring it down, and hand them concret…
Major Depression Nursing Care Plans
A depressed patient is on every unit you will ever work, not just psych. The first thing you manage is the one that kills: suicide risk. After that, the work …
Nursing Diagnosis for Schizophrenia: 6 Nursing Care Plans
Your job with a schizophrenic client comes down to safety, trust, and reality. Hallucinations and delusions can drive a client to hurt themselves or someone e…
Personality Disorders Nursing Care Plans
Personality disorders test your consistency more than your clinical skill. The patient will split staff, test limits, flatter you, and act out when those limi…
Sexual Assault Nursing Care Plan
Sexual assault is any sexual contact or behavior that happens against a person's will. It covers rape (non-consensual vaginal, anal, or oral penetration by fo…
Substance Use Disorder Nursing Care Plans
Substance use disorder turns up on every unit, not just psych. You will care for these patients during withdrawal, after trauma, postop, and in medical beds w…
Urinary (12)
3 Hemodialysis Nursing Care Plans
Hemodialysis clears solutes by diffusion across a semipermeable membrane that sits between the patient's blood and the dialysate. Blood runs out of the body t…
4 Acute Glomerulonephritis Nursing Care Plans
Acute glomerulonephritis usually shows up as a school-age child with puffy eyes, tea-colored urine, a climbing blood pressure, and dropping urine output. Your…
4 Hypospadias and Epispadias Nursing Care Plans
Hypospadias and epispadias are congenital anomalies of the penis caused by incomplete development of the anterior urethra. In hypospadias, the urethral openin…
6 Benign Prostatic Hyperplasia (BPH) Nursing Care Plans
BPH usually walks in as an older man who can't empty his bladder: nocturia, hesitancy, a weak stream, and that constant feeling he's never quite done. Your jo…
8 Peritoneal Dialysis Nursing Care Plans
Peritoneal dialysis uses the patient's own peritoneal membrane as the filter. When the kidneys fail, this is one of the ways you pull fluid and waste out of t…
8 Prostatectomy Nursing Care Plans
Prostatectomy removes part or all of the prostate. Your postop job is hemodynamic stability, comfort, preventing complications, and keeping bleeding and bladd…
Acute Renal Failure Nursing Care Plans
Acute renal failure is fast, dangerous, and often missed. Most clients have no symptoms tied to the kidneys and get caught only on a routine blood panel, so y…
Impaired Urinary Elimination (Urinary Incontinence & Urinary Retention) Nursing Diagnosis & Care Plans
Impaired urinary elimination covers two opposite problems you will see constantly on the floor: incontinence (urine the client cannot hold) and retention (uri…
Urinary Tract Infection Nursing Care Plans
UTIs are one of the most common reasons patients land in the ED, and you will see them constantly on the floor. Get the assessment, antibiotics, hydration, an…
Urolithiasis (Renal Calculi) Nursing Care Plans
Renal colic is some of the worst pain your patients will ever describe, and most of your job is controlling it, keeping them hydrated to pass the stone, and c…
Vesicoureteral Reflux (VUR) Nursing Care Plans
VUR is mostly a pediatric problem, and your job is preventing the UTIs that scar kidneys. Many children outgrow it without surgery as long as infection stays …
Wilms Tumor (Nephroblastoma) Nursing Care Plans
Most of the time a parent finds it first, a firm, nontender abdominal mass noticed while bathing or dressing the child. Your job on the floor is to protect th…
Reproductive (2)
Hysterectomy and TAHBSO Nursing Care Plans
Hysterectomy is the surgical removal of the uterus, done most often for malignancy, for non-malignant conditions like endometriosis or fibroids, to control li…
Menopause Nursing Care Plans
Menopause is the permanent end of menstruation, driven by declining ovarian function. The transition leading up to it, the climacteric, runs on falling estrog…
Respiratory (15)
4 Tonsillitis Nursing Care Plans
Tonsillitis is inflamed, infected tonsils, and most of your patients will be children. The swelling makes swallowing and talking hard and pushes the child to …
5 Epiglottitis Nursing Care Plans
Epiglottitis is an airway emergency. The epiglottis and surrounding supraglottic tissue swell fast and can close off the airway before you have room to react.…
7 Hemothorax and Pneumothorax Nursing Care Plans and Management
Both conditions put air or blood where it does not belong and shrink the lung's ability to breathe. Most of your work centers on the chest drainage system, th…
Apnea Nursing Care Plans
An apneic infant on your unit means a monitor that will alarm at 3 a.m., parents who are terrified to sleep, and a discharge plan that lives or dies on how we…
Asthma Nursing Care Plans
A patient mid-exacerbation is frightened, hypoxic, and working every accessory muscle they have, and your first job is to stay calm because their anxiety and …
Bronchiolitis and Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) Nursing Care Plans
A bronchiolitic infant on your unit is a small airway that keeps plugging with mucus, a feeding that stalls because the baby cannot breathe and suck at the sa…
Bronchopulmonary Dysplasia (BPD) Nursing Care Plans
The infant in front of you was born too soon, spent days on a ventilator with high oxygen, and now their lungs are scarred. That is BPD. Your job is to suppor…
Cystic Fibrosis Nursing Care Plans
Cystic fibrosis patients live with thick, dehydrated mucus that plugs the airways and a pancreas that cannot get enzymes to the gut. On the unit your work com…
Drowning (Submersion Injury) Nursing Care Plans
A drowning patient hits your unit hypoxic, often hypothermic, and sometimes in arrest. Your job is airway, oxygenation, cerebral perfusion, rewarming, and wat…
Influenza (Flu) Nursing Care Plans
Most flu patients never see your unit. The ones who do are the very young, the very old, the immunocompromised, and the previously healthy patient whose viral…
Pneumonia Nursing Care Plans
Pneumonia fills the alveoli with infection and fluid, so the patient in front of you is almost always fighting two problems at once: gas exchange and the work…
Pulmonary Tuberculosis Nursing Care Plans
Your job with a TB patient breaks down to three things: keep them on their drugs, keep them from infecting anyone else, and keep their airway and nutrition st…
Respiratory Acidosis Nursing Care Plan and Management
Respiratory acidosis happens when the lungs cannot blow off enough carbon dioxide. CO2 builds up, carbonic acid rises, and blood pH drops. Your job at the bed…
Respiratory Alkalosis Nursing Care Plan
Respiratory alkalosis is a loss of carbon dioxide from a marked increase in respiratory rate. The two things that drive the hyperventilation are hypoxemia and…
Risk for Aspiration (Aspiration Pneumonia) Nursing Diagnosis & Care Plan
Aspiration happens when foreign material reaches the trachea and lungs, and it turns into chemical pneumonitis or aspiration pneumonia fast. Your job with at-…
Sensory (4)
Cataracts Nursing Care Plan
A cataract is a clouding of the lens that builds slowly until vision blurs, colors fade, and glare becomes intolerable. Most of these patients are older adult…
Glaucoma Nursing Care Plan
Glaucoma destroys the optic nerve quietly. By the time a chronic patient notices missing peripheral vision, nerve damage is already done and it does not come …
Macular Degeneration Nursing Care Plan
Macular degeneration takes the center of a patient's vision and leaves the edges. Faces blur, straight lines bend, and reading gets hard, but peripheral visio…
Otitis Media & Myringotomy Nursing Care Plan
Otitis media is mostly a pediatric problem, and a miserable one: ear pain, fever, and muffled hearing in a child who cannot always tell you what hurts. Watch …