The Five Phases of the Nursing Process

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Effective nursing care plays a very important role in health care as it safeguards the patients and helps them recover as soon as possible. There are many processes that contribute to effective nursing care, nursing process is one of them. Nursing process consists of 5 main phases; Assessment phase, Diagnosing phase, Planning phase, Implementing phase and Evaluation phase. All the phases work hand in hand together and one links to another with every phase having its important role. This process helps to improve the effectiveness of the care as it is directed to every patient individually.

The first and one of the most important phases is the Assessment phase where the nurse has to gather as much information as possible in order to establish a database based on the patient’s lifestyle, medical history, health problems, allergies, medical results and so on. This type of database is a continuous one, always gathering new information about the patient as to be as detailed, precise and as effective as possible. This phase can also be split up into four other categories; (i) the initial assessment: where the information is gathered on admission of the patient. (ii) Problem focused assessment: This is used to monitor how the patient is doing after being diagnosed with a specific problem in an assessment carried out before. (iii) Emergency assessment: This assessment is quite crucial since it is done when patients in critical state and has to be done quickly in order to pinpoint any life threatening complications. Such assessment could monitor breathing, circulation and airway after a cardiac arrest. (iv) Time-lapsed assessment: This is done some months after the last assessment in order to determine how the patient’s health is so...

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...o focuses on the social and emotional needs of the patient as most phases are tackled hand in hand with the patient making it an interpersonal and collaborative process. Another positive note regarding these phases is that it is universally applicable where there are only minor differences such as the names of the phases. Having a holistic structure like this surely provides a more effective way of nursing care.

Works Cited

http://www.nursingprocess.org/Nursing-Process-Steps.html

http://medicachemistry.blogspot.com/2013/03/nursing-process.html

http://www.scribd.com/doc/5378740/THE-NURSING-PROCESS

http://www.slideshare.net/anuchithra/nursing-process-implementing-and-evaluating

http://www.slideshare.net/anuchithra/nursing-process-planning

Nursing process : Dr. Huda .B. Hassan

Nursing Process: Foundation for Practice: NPN 105 Joyce Smith RN, BSN

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