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Holly M Arana
ENGL 101A
Dr. Bose
April 9, 2016
Care Plans: A Genre in the Nursing Profession
When one thinks of a genre, they think of music, or a type of writing style used in a
poem. A genre can be much more than the type of music you listen to or poem you read. It can be
something that characterizes a piece of writing from a college admission essay to a Facebook
update. The style, form, and subject matter that each composition is written in is depicted to be a
certain genre. Different genres are used in many different places. Some that I feel are quite
important, are the ones written in and for the hospital and patients. The genres that are used by
many nurses to care for their patient are called care plans. These documents do not just begin
with their importance in nursing school, but also throughout the nursing profession. This genre
can be and should be written in only one way for the benefit of the patient and the physicians at
the hospital.
To begin, care plans are an essential part for the nursing student to learn while they are
working towards a nursing degree. Care plans are written for the patient, family members and
other nurses or physicians to be able to understand how the patient should be treated. A list of
processes and steps are written to that hospitals can ensure that the quality of a patients care is
effective. In an article from csus.edu, it is written that care plans are used to help define the
nurses role in the patients treatment in providing consistency of care and customizing
interventions for each patient. The guidelines for the way care plans should be written are
extremely specific and there is usually no room for any mistake to be made. As a nurse, you

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should be able to make sure that you make as little mistakes as possible in the hospital setting
because peoples lives are at stake. You want to be able to better the condition of the patient and
not worsen it.
There are significant attributes that nursing documentation should have. For example, in
school they teach you that the most important purpose of documentation is to communicate to
other members of the health care team the client's progress and condition. according to Nursing
Care Plans and Documentation by Lynda Juall Carpenito-Moyet. Care plans are important for
many reasons while the most important ones are: to define the nursing focus for a particular
patient, provide the necessary information for any physician or health care provider to be able to
improve the health of the patient, and also to be able to provide data for administrative and legal
review (Carpenito-Moyet 26). In order to be able to write a proper care plan, a nurse needs to
interview, examine, and observe a patient in order to make educated conclusions about the state
of health that a patient is in. It is extremely important for the nurses to be able to gather all of the
necessary information that they can so that when other physicians care for a patient, it is done
correctly. If a patient is not cared for properly, it can be a problem not only for the patient but
also for the nurse and possibly the hospital.
Historically, nurses have believed that the more information a nurse has charted, the
better his or her legal defense will be in any litigation. Nursing documentation must be objective
and comprehensive and must accurately reflect the status of the client and what has happened to
him or her (Carpenito-Moyet 30). It was taught that the more that you wrote down about a
patient, the better off you would be in being able to be safe form any misinformation or
confusion from other nurses. Hospitals or nurses can sometimes face legal consequences if they
do not do their job properly. Some nurses even go by the saying If it wasnt charted, it wasnt

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done. Many nurses undergo so much pressure to have everything be done perfectly. That is why
in the nursing schools, care plans are written so frequently.
My professor would always make the students write care plans. Sometimes it
seemed that it was all we did in class. When we finally got to be able to work in
the hospital, I thought that I would be able to work a lot more with the patients
without having to deal with nursing documentation, but I was wrong. Our
professor made us write care plans about every patient that we cared for. It was a
grueling and tedious experience, but I was able to learn so much more about the
way I should care for my patients with whatever sickness or injury they had. I
learned how to think outside the box to discover the necessary steps to heal a
patient.
Milner, Julie. Personal Interview. 8 April 2016

There are specific steps that nurse have to take in order to write a correct care plan. This is done
so that the nurses and patients are assured that their nursing care towards a patient is effective.
With this in mind, care plans should include diagnostic statements (collaborative problems or
nurses diagnoses), goals (outcome criteria), nursing orders or interventions, and evaluation
(status of diagnoses and client progress). These guidelines are important and are well thought
over by each nurse, but ultimately their goal is to nurse their patients back to health. It is always
a good feeling to know that I was able to bring someone back to health even through there was a
lot of work and time that went into the documentation process of care plans (Plog, Patricia.
Personal Interview). Though it seems that nurses spend a lot of their time with documents and

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writing care plans for patients, that is not always the case. In nursing school, it is an obvious
requirement that students need to know how to do, but once nurses get into the hospital, the
amount of papers that they have to write is much different depending on where they work.
In the hospital setting, the way in which care plans are written and processed are a lot
different. Though care plans are especially important for the nursing students to know how to
write, that often changes as the nurses start their jobs in a hospital. In some hospitals, the care
plans are already printed. After assessing a patient, nurses have to choose a care plan that
pertains the condition in which the patient is at (Plog Interview). The care plans are
standardized for common injuries or sicknesses that are dealt with in the hospital. There are
however, cases in which the care plans do not have the specific steps that are necessary to take to
care for certain injuries or sicknesses. That is why nurses have to learn about taking necessary
steps and thinking outside of the box to intervene and come up with a care plan of their own
when necessary. The standardized care plans in the hospitals are designed to help the nurse know
how to think in a certain way about how their patient needs to be cared for. It is easier in many
cases for nurses to have something to help push them in the right direction as some days can be
more stressful and challenging. Many people, when faced with tough situations, cannot focus and
make rational decisions as they would in a calm and peaceful state of mind. Thus making it a
blessing to have these standardized documents available.
It is apparent as stated above that nurses face many challenges on a daily basis. When
nurses face the sick and dying every day it can be overwhelming. That is why these standardized
care plans are so important. It keeps the nurses from making a mistake, to stay on track, and aid
them in knowing what they are required to do in certain situations. The job of a nurse is one that
should be taken seriously, as Patricia stated in her interview. Every person that is on a patients

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case whether they are other nurses, physicians or family, need to know what they are dealing
with in terms of health and what they need to do to treat the sick. Care plans help everyone be in
organization and in agreement with one another. As a nurse, you are not only working with other
physicians around you, but also the families of your patient. Not only does the hospital depend
on the nurses ability to work hard but also the families. Using the correct documentation will
benefit everyone involved in each and every patients case.
Some nurses however, do not always have the luxury of having the care plans already
printed and ready to use. Nurses that work in schools or jails have to write their own care plans.
For example, Julie Milner, an R.N. who has been working as a nurse for twenty-seven years has
had many different experiences working as a nurse professional. The environment from a
hospital to a school or jail are quite different.
Recently, she has been working for the Santa Cruz County Jail and has found that it is
often very stressful and a lot of hard work. The inmates come in and she has to assess, observe,
and interview each one on their state of health. She has to make sure that they are all in good
condition before they are sent anywhere else. Throughout this process, she has to make sure that
they take the correct medications and are properly cared for if they are sick or injured. With this
responsibility that she carries, writing care plans for these inmates are a crucial part to getting
them better. She does not have a standardized plan to help her with the care process. That is why
is some areas of the health care profession, it is most important to be able to write these care
plans. There arent any guidelines or pre-printed care plans in every facility that provides health
care. Without the ability to write them, the work place would be overwhelming and unbearable
due to people not being on the same page of how a patient should be cared for.

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As you can see, hospitals and other health care facilities can be places of much
stress and pain, but this environment does not stop nurses and doctors from doing their jobs
efficiently and correctly. There are certain things that are used on a daily basis so these people
are able to work together and stay focused on the job. Care plans are essential for this calmness
and efficiency to be carried out through the hospital. Not only are they helpful to the nursing
staff but also the physicians and family of each patient. These plans are an important part of the
nursing profession and an important genre that is used every day to help patients get well. It is
important to remember that genres are not always linked to a type of music or writing style, but
are used in everyday life and work places. And certain genres are especially used in the health
care career to better the lives of people every day.

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Works Cited
Common Genres in Nursing. Care Plans. 2010. Web. 09 Apr. 2016
Juall Carpenito Moyet R.N., Lynda. Nursing Care Plans and Documentation: Nursing
Diagnosis and Collaborative Problems. Ovid: Nursing Care. University of Arizona Library
Database. 2009. Web. 7 Apr. 2016
Milner, Julie A. Personal Interview. 8 April 2016.
Plog, Patricia. Personal Interview. 7 April 2016.