4.4: Applying the Nursing Process

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Ernstmeyer & Christman (Eds.)
Chippewa Valley Technical College via OpenRN

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The nursing process is a critical thinking model based on a systematic approach to patient-centered care. Nurses use the nursing process to perform clinical reasoning and make clinical judgments when providing patient care. The nursing process is based on the Standards of Professional Nursing Practice established by the American Nurses Association (ANA). These standards are authoritative statements of the actions and behaviors that all registered nurses, regardless of role, population, specialty, and setting, are expected to perform competently.^{^[1]}

The mnemonic ADOPIE is an easy way to remember the six ANA standards regarding the nursing process. Each letter refers to one of the six components of the nursing process: Assessment, Diagnosis, Outcomes Identification, Planning, Implementation, and Evaluation. The nursing process is a continuous, cyclic process that is constantly adapting to the patient’s current health status. See Figure 4.1^{^[2]} for an illustration of the nursing process.

Image showing a diagram of the nursing process — Figure 4.1 The Nursing Process

Review using the nursing process in the “Nursing Process” chapter in Open RN Nursing Fundamentals.

American Nurses Association. (2021). Nursing: Scope and standards of practice (4th ed.). American Nurses Association. ↵
“The Nursing Process” by Kim Ernstmeyer at Chippewa Valley Technical College is licensed under CC BY 4.0 ↵