Individual Patients Needs and Personalising Their Care Plans - Essay Example

Individual patients needs and personalising their care plans Department Individual patient’s needs and personalising their care plans Introduction Nursing care plans are vital to the standards of nursing care service delivery and interventions that are undertaken with the nurses in any health care setting. Ideally, nursing care plans are supposed to be specific to the patient as an individual. It should also contain details of intervention information, which has to be provided to help the individual service users in the recovery from their mental health needs and areas of challenges (Lee 2006, pp.1376–1382). Individualized nursing care helps the nurses in planning and evaluating patient outcomes basing on the individual needs of the patient. Patient needs are different, and different patient require different needs depending on their condition. Therefore, individualizing patient care helps the patient b taken care of in the right manner while receiving the best health services aiming at making the patient comfortable and recover well from an illness. Even though care in the delivery of nursing services is individualized, challenges still occur in the nursing practices in developing a personalized approach to the development of care plan. Therefore, in the process of improving the nursing services rendered to mental health patients, the nurses are required to assess comprehensively and respond to the users individualized service needs and the risks identified. Through actively engaging, the service users in developing nursing care plan that encompasses social, psychological, spiritual and physical needs reduces the risks from developing (Ervin 2006, pp.126–130). Nursing care plan Nursing care plans are central components of nursing services being delivered to the users. In making and planning care of patients, nurses should adopt the provision of individualized care that is personalized. The consumers of the services, who are the patients, need to receive a copy if the care plans after they have participated in its development. The care plan should contain the patients views and what they would wish to receive as part of their care and be encouraged to sign it (Tsirintani et al. 2001, p.10). When service users are encouraged to participate and be at the center of developing nursing care and care through the approaches of care planning promotes patients empowerment and supports them through the recovery process. The centrality of care that is individualized in planning has a vital outcome in the services being received by the personalized care treatment and support. The process involves the assessment of the patients’ needs and the planning and delivery of care that meets the needs of the individual. In addition, it promotes the safety and welfare of the individual patient. This is evidenced based and avoids discrimination that is unlawful by the use of reasonable adjustments to meet the individual needs that were identified (Johansson et al. 2002, pp.337–344). In the supporting individual patients who have long term conditions, collaborative approaches in goal setting, problem-solving, planning of actions, negotiation and shared decision making is encourages with the patient. Individualizing nursing care using care plans empowers the patients to have several choices over their healthcare. It makes them have control over their healthcare, and this promotes confidence in the recovery process and thus becoming a vital point in delivering high-quality services. The use of care plans allows patients in making decisions on what they want to work for them in partnership with the health care professionals who offer support and care to them. A comprehensive care plan helps in early detection and identification of risk and problems that might develop, this helps in creating approaches, and early interventions before the patient can go into complication (Cardwell et al. 2011, pp.1378–82). Individualized care and development of nursing care plans are considered as ways to improving patient recovery. Despite care plan being seen as an important tool in delivering health care services, it is often misunderstood by the health care professionals and seen as an extra task from the administration. The nurses see this method of care as a time wasting since it takes much of their time. With the amount of work, which nurses are expected to accomplish by the end of every shift, the time they need to spend with the patient in order to develop individualized care plan for every patient becomes a challenge to have. The ratio of nurses to the patients who need nursing care is huge, and every nurse is, therefore, expected to work harder in every shift so that every patient can be attended to. This is a big challenge to nursing care plan development (Björvell et al. 2000, pp.6–13). Every patient needs care that is directed towards intervening his or her problems, but this does not happen most of the times in a clinical set up. In most of the times in hospital settings, the care of patients is planned and done on behalf of the patients rather than with the patients. This happens because the nurses have limited time to sit down together with the patients to plan for care (Wagner & Bear 2009, pp.692–701). In practice, challenges do often occur in the implementation of care plan that is personalized in certain circumstances where the patient in acutely ill during admission. During admission, it may be hard for the nurses to initiate individualized care because the patient may not be in the right mental state and insight to participate in the development of his or her care plan. In this case, the nurse will be forced to outline and develop care on behalf of the patient (Jansson et al. 2009, pp.56–64). These challenges can be addressed through several ways that are aiming at creating a conducive environment that facilitate quick recovery of patients and their participation to their recovery. The nurse patient ratio should be reduced so that the nurses taking care of the patients should not be overburden with work, and this will make them have time to discuss with the patients regarding their health. With every nurse having the recommended number of patients to take care of, their attitude towards the use of care plan in health care service delivery will automatically change. The nurses will not see it as a burden given by the administration, but rather a tool to enhance their service delivery since they will have time to engage with their patients and discuss (Cook et al. 2012, pp.1378–82). In addition, the nurses should be informed on the importance of engaging the family members in developing care plan of the patient in cases where patients cannot participate. Family members do provide good information regarding the patient’s condition, and they can have a great role to play towards the recovery of the patient. Finally, for the nurses to appreciate the importance of the use of nursing care plans in the treatment and service delivery in hospitals, regular training must be conducted on nursing care plans. It is through training that they will be equipped with knowledge on .how the tools should be applied and the importance it has to the nurse and the client (Jansson et al. 2010, pp.611–618). References Björvell, C., Thorell-Ekstrand, I. & Wredling, R., 2000. Development of an audit instrument for nursing care plans in the patient record. Quality in health care : QHC, 9, pp.6–13. Cardwell, P. et al., 2011. Is care planning still relevant in the 21st century? British journal of nursing (Mark Allen Publishing), 20, pp.1378–82. Cook, L.K. et al., 2012. From care plan to concept map: A paradigm shift. Teaching and Learning in Nursing, 7, pp.88–92. Ervin, N.E., 2006. Does patient satisfaction contribute to nursing care quality? The Journal of nursing administration, 36, pp.126–130. Jansson, I., Pilhammar, E. & Forsberg, A., 2009. Obtaining a foundation for nursing care at the time of patient admission: a grounded theory study. The open nursing journal, 3, pp.56–64. Jansson, I., Pilhammar-Andersson, E. & Forsberg, A., 2010. Evaluation of documented nursing care plans by the use of nursing-sensitive outcome indicators. Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice, 16, pp.611–618. Johansson, P., Oléni, M. & Fridlund, B., 2002. Patient satisfaction with nursing care in the context of health care: A literature study. Scandinavian Journal of Caring Sciences, 16, pp.337–344. Lee, T.T., 2006. Nurses’ perceptions of their documentation experiences in a computerized nursing care planning system. Journal of Clinical Nursing, 15, pp.1376–1382. Tsirintani, M. et al., 2001. An expert system of diagnosis-based cardiac nursing care plans. ICUs & Nursing Web Journal, p.10p. Wagner, D. & Bear, M., 2009. Patient satisfaction with nursing care: A concept analysis within a nursing framework. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 65, pp.692–701.  Read More