Reddit mentions: The best nursing assessment & diagnosis books

I have 2 care plan books and I have used them all the way through clinicals (I'm just finishing up my last semester and getting ready to start my preceptorship).

I would HIGHLY recommend a care plan book, they have help me immensely. Our instructors have us do a major care plan at least once per semester. When it's all typed up it ends up being about 20 pages or so. We are required to have numerous interventions and rationales for those interventions. It would be 10 times harder to do that without a good care plan book.

The ones I have and like a lot:
http://www.amazon.com/Nursing-Care-Plans-Guidelines-Individualizing/dp/0803622104

http://www.amazon.com/Nursing-Diagnosis-Handbook-Guide-Planning/dp/0323036643

Hopefully this helps you out a bit.

Never heard of such a thing.

I will say this, go ahead and buy some used care plan books off Amazon.

They'll make your life a hell of a lot easier.

Also, keep all your care plans saved on your computer in case you need to reference them. That and when you're in your final semester, you'll be able to look at a care plan you wrote in first or second semester and cringe.

Back to the books, here's what I recommend:

About $8 used.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/0803630417

And about $6 used.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/0323085490

I ended up getting another med-surg and OB/peds book off Amazon too, both for like $10 a pop, because the shit my school gave us was garbage. Don't be afraid to invest in yourself!

My surgery rotations were in thoracic and cardiac surgery. I used ineffective gas exchange very often both because of the trauma of surgery (which may not be as relevant for abdominal procedures), but also because of the decreased mobility leading to decreased air entry.

If you have the means to get one, and if your program is cool with you using them, my care plan book was a lifesaver! I used this one. I think a new one has since been released, although I don't know if it's Canadian or American.

I would probably pick one of the conditions, whichever one is the priority which will be the cardiac one.

Do you have a nursing diagnosis/care plan book? I use Davis's Nursing Care Plans:Guidelines for Individualizing Client Care Across the Life Span.

For HF, nursing diagnosis can be:

Decreased cardiac output related to altered myocardial contractility as evidenced by increased heart rate, dysrhythmias, ECG changes (or whatever changes they may be experiencing)

Activity intolerance related to imbalance between oxygen supply and demand as evidenced by weakness and fatigue

Usually nursing diagnosis are by priority, so obviously anything dealing with the airway or circulation would be the most important to make a diagnosis for. :)

It gets a lot easier. My first careplan was terrible. I think they are much easier to draft after you have had patho and med surg. Good luck!

EDIT: this is the care plan book I used the most
http://smile.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0323091377/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?qid=1457917093&sr=8-1&pi=SY200_QL40&keywords=nursing+care+plan+book&dpPl=1&dpID=51426KTcX9L&ref=plSrch

Hello! "Hemodynamic Monitoring Made Incredibly Visual" by Lippincott's Incredibly Easy series is an awesome source! Helped me a lot when starting out :)

https://www.amazon.com/Hemodynamic-Monitoring-Made-Incredibly-Visual/dp/1608313409

I use Ackley and Ladwig and love it. I have an older edition, pretty sure this is the newest:

http://www.amazon.com/Nursing-Diagnosis-Handbook-Evidence-Based-Planning/dp/0323085490/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1417655734&sr=8-1&keywords=ackley+and+ladwig+nursing+diagnosis+handbook

Here are some links for the product in the above comment for different countries:

Smile Link: Davis's Nursing Care Plans:Guidelines for Individualizing Client Care Across the Life Span.


|Country|Link|
|:-----------|:------------|
|UK|amazon.co.uk|
|Spain|amazon.es|
|France|amazon.fr|
|Germany|amazon.de|
|Japan|amazon.co.jp|
|Canada|amazon.ca|
|Italy|amazon.it|
|China|amazon.cn|




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The big red flag to me is that she is a bad test taker. If this is the case the NCLEX will be your worst nightmare.

Probably she isn't thinking right to take the test, this is not regurgitation testing. But let me put something in perspective: the NCLEX is 75 minimum but around 15 are ungraded trial questions, of the remaining 60 graded the books usually say both people who pass at 75 only get 50% right so that's a total of 30/75 questions needed to pass.

Getting freaked out because the questions are getting harder is a sure way to fail but saying "I only need 30 of 75" sounds much better.

Here are the areas I would personally focus on:
Med Calcs

Leadership (scope of CNA, LVN, RN, when to call the MD - never on the NCLEX!)

Drug classes - learn the classes not the individual drugs and learn their endings - http://www.amazon.com/Mosbys-Pharmacology-Memory-NoteCards-ebook/dp/B0052KDP9G/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1343659846&sr=8-2&keywords=mosby%27s+pharmacology+memory+notecards

Labs - http://www.amazon.com/Mosbys-Fluids-Electrolytes-Memory-NoteCards/dp/0323067468/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1343659846&sr=8-3&keywords=mosby%27s+pharmacology+memory+notecards

And know assessment findings as well as possible

NCLEX is going to throw nothing but curveballs no matter how many times she takes it. And it should - I didn't appreciate it at the time but I deal with making decisions when I don't know the answer all the time. There is no way she can prep for all the possible questions but knowing normal well is pretty doable.

My last advice is have her know the basics of the big managable disorders in all areas - adult (diabetes I & II, heart disease, smoking/respiratory, stroke, normal aging vs diseases), infant/peds (whooping cough, asthma, diabetes I, developmental stages by age, sickle cell), pregnancy timing/stages/complications.

Try getting some of her friends who are more experienced to throw her curve balls from real life.

I'll bet that the problem is she got freaked out when the questions looked really different from the Kaplan. Strategy > knowledge.

I really liked this [one] (http://www.amazon.com/The-ATI-NCLEX-RN-Review-Information/dp/1565335260). I'm not a huge fan of ATI, but this review book had most of the information laid out nicely.

http://www.amazon.com/Nursing-Care-Plans-Diagnoses-Interventions/dp/0323091377

http://www.amazon.com/Nurses-Pocket-Guide-Prioritized-Interventions/dp/0803622341/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1417627393&sr=1-1-fkmr0&keywords=nurses+pocket+guide+diagnoses+prioritized+interventions+and+rationales+13th+edition

By far the two best I have used...I'm in my last semester of a RN/BSN program...

This one is, hands down, the best IMO. But buy an old version - I was able to get one for around $8 a few years ago.

NANDA, NOC, and NIC Linkages: Nursing Diagnoses, Outcomes, and Interventions https://www.amazon.com/dp/0323031943/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_wmzBDb8Y93VEK

https://www.amazon.com/Nursing-Assessment-Quickstudy-Inc-BarCharts/dp/1423214331
I used to put this on my clipboard as a cheat sheet and it came in handy so many times! Good luck!

this is the book my program recommends for ours. There are many different ones out there, see if you can find a booklist for your program and see which one they recommend (if they do). You'll definitely need it! It's helped me out so much with my careplans. Some of the girls in my classes only rented it and were regretting it. They're planning on buying it now because we need it in our future quarters.

Maybe this one? It has a good review on AMZ

I recommend using the NANDA nursing diagnosis book. It help me a lot in school with this kind of thing. Don’t worry, you never do this in real life.


NANDA International Nursing Diagnoses: Definitions & Classification, 2018-2020 https://www.amazon.com/dp/1626239290/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_IOJYDb929R01V

I've done a bit of research, this book is rated fairly high on amazon! You can check out some of the reviews. https://www.amazon.com/dp/0323322247/ref=cm_sw_r_other_apa_Y.VRBb1VNF70N

[TASK] $3 for this book: Nursing Diagnosis Handbook: An Evidence-Based Guide to Planning Care, 11e REAL PDF OF BOOK
submitted just now by Diggity_McG

I'm not looking for the epub version. I already have that and it sucks. Epub is a crap format for a textbook. I need the actual book as a pdf instead as the formatting makes more sense for this book and the epub is actually missing things from the print edition.

Nursing Diagnosis Handbook: An Evidence-Based Guide to Planning Care, 11e 11th Edition

by Betty J. Ackley MSN EdS RN (Author),‎ Gail B. Ladwig MSN RN (Author),‎ Mary Beth Flynn Makic RN PhD CNS CCNS CCRN (Author)

ISBN: 978-0323322249

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0323322247/ref=rdr_ext_tmb

I have this one: https://www.amazon.com/Nursing-Diagnosis-Handbook-Evidence-Based-Planning/dp/0323322247/ref=nodl_

This is the one our school made us get my 1st semester of nursing of Fall’18!

My school had us buy the Swearingen All in One and it was beyond useless. I ended up getting a copy of the Ackley & Ladwig book, and it was really useful to me. I see not everyone agrees with that, but I guess everything is YMMV. What I like about A&L is that the front half of the book is a list of conditions with possible nursing dx (i.e. you might look up "cystic fibrosis" and find dxes of ineffective airway clearance, impaired gas exchange, etc.) and then the back of the book was just nursing diagnoses in alphabetical order, with indications, outcomes, and interventions. So if you had looked up CF in the front of the book and wanted to write a care plan about ineffective airway clearance, you'd flip to the ineffective airway clearance section in the back and just pick out however many interventions you need.

Edit: a word

What's 200 level?

http://www.amazon.com/Nursing-Care-Plans-Diagnoses-Interventions/dp/0323091377/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1417620785&sr=8-1&keywords=nursing+care+plan

I use this on for adults but this really don't help for Peds and Maternity. Also, don't buy the kindle version, its a waste of money