Basics and Standards of Care Planning

Care Plan Meeting Tune-up

From Complete Care Plans for Long Term Care

Communication Care Plan

Vision Care Plan

From Home Health Care Plans

Heart Failure Care Plan

Dressing Care Plan

Send in Your Care Plan Questions:   Email LTCS

Do you have a care plan for Diabetes?

from Karen, Ohio

“Diabetes” is a medical diagnosis. LTCS care plans are nursing care plans, and are based on nursing observations of a resident’s functional and behavioral patterns and what the observation is related to. Nursing diagnoses are based on objective signs and symptoms of the problem that can be addressed by nursing interventions.

A resident’s Diabetes would be addressed by its physical or behavioral manifestations, such as: Potential for Hypoglycemia/Hyperglycemia related to Unstable Blood Sugars, Potential for Skin Ulcers related to Diabetes, Knowledge Deficit: Resident needs instruction on glucose monitoring and medication administration, Non Compliance with Prescribed Diet, Potential for Impaired Vision related to Diabetes.

How many facilities are using I Care Plans?

from Jody, Massachusetts

As far as we know, there’s not been a statistical study to date on the use of I-centered care plans. During the past eight years we’ve sold thousands of care plan books and we’ve only had three customers mention that format. All of the care plans in our books are also on the CD, so any of them can be easily changed to the I-centered style.

Residents’ participation in the care planning process should be encouraged and facilitated in every way, and their preferences should be discovered, documented, and honored in every way. Whether I-centered care plans really help that process is debatable. They are not yet mandated by regulations, but they do remain the documentation poster child of care reform associations.

We see pros and cons. It could possibly be good to change any of the resident’s stated preferences about care into the first person, but the argument has been made by many providers that changing “the resident prefers” to “I prefer” is a semantic and documentation change that may not have any effect on staff or resident behavior and quality of care.

Trying to alter everything in the resident’s care plan to first person may also be awkward and artificial, since the purpose of the care plan is primarily to instruct staff members how to care for the resident.