Nursing process and Advantages of nursing process

Nursing services are necessary for every patient seeking care of various types including primary, secondary, tertiary and restorative. As nursing is an important part of health care delivery system, the nurses need to understand the system to effectively deliver quality care within it.

Nursing:

Nursing is the process of recognizing, understanding and meeting the health needs of any person or society and is based on a constantly changing body of scientific knowledge.

Nursing Process:

It is a deliberate intellectual activity whereby the practice of nursing is approached in an orderly, systematic manner to patient care, in a dynamic, continuous method to assist the patient to achieve and maintain health.

The nursing process is an orderly systematic manner of determining the patient' s problems, making plans to solve them, initiating the plan or assigning others to implement it and evaluating the extent to which the plan was effective in resolving the problems identified.

The nursing process is a systematic method for assessing health status, diagnosing health care needs, formulating a plan of care, initiating plan and evaluating the effectiveness of plan.

The nursing process consists of five interrelated phases

1.     Assessment

2.     Diagnosis

3.     Planning

4.     Implementation

5.     Evaluation

1.Assessment :-This refers to a systematic collection of data, to assist in identifying needs and problems. Data are collected in a systematic fashion, utilizing the interview or nursing history, physical examinations, laboratory results and other resources.

2.Diagnosis :-Nursing diagnosis is a clinical judgment about individual family or community responses to actual and potential health problems and life processes. During this phase, the data collected during assessment are critically analysed and interpreted. Conclusions are drawn regarding the patient' s needs, problems, concerns and human responses.

3.Planning: - Planning is a systematic approach in developing a plan of action based on a careful assessment. Strategies are developed to prevent, minimize or connect the problems identified in the nursing diagnosis.

It consists of several steps including establishing priorities, setting objectives, writing interventions, recording outcomes of nursing interventions in an organized fashion to complete the nursing care plan.

          Implementation:- It refers to carry out a plan that is based on careful assessment of need. It is the initiation and completion of action necessary to achieve the outcomes or objectives.

        Evaluation:- It is an ongoing process that determines the extent to which the goals care has been achieved. The nurses assess the progress of the patient, institute corrective measures if required, and revise the nursing care plan.

Advantages of nursing process :

The nursing process helps the nurse and the nursing in many ways

Helps to create a health data base of a patient

Helps to identify actual or potential health problems of a patient

Helps to establish priorities of nursing actions for providing proper services to the patients.

Helps to define specific nursing actions for providing proper services to the patients

Helps to develop planned organized and individualised nursing care.

Helps to encourage for innovative nursing care.

Helps to provide for alternative nursing actions.

Helps to develop nursing autonomy and to foster nursing accountability

Helps to increase the effectiveness of nursing care.