User Guide — Nursing Care Plans

You must be logged in to a department that uses athenaOne for Hospitals & Health Systems.

You must have the Clinicals Admin: Other Templates permission to access the Text Macros page.

As part of the admission process, you must add a nursing care plan for the patient.

Tip: You can use the Chart Export feature to share a patient's nursing care plan with other providers.

1. In the patient chart, click the arrow in the green workflow menu (at the upper right) and select Go To Care Plans. (The options available in the green workflow menu depend on your user role.)
   
2. Nursing Care Plan —To use a predefined nursing care plan, enter .ncp in the text field and select the plan you need from the search results.
   To create a new nursing care plan, enter the text to use for the nursing care plan.
   To save the new plan, click the star icon to the right of the field and enter a shortcut name for the plan beginning with NCP_.
   To edit the text before you save it, click Edit text.
   To designate this text macro as a nursing care plan only, check Make available in the current section only.
   Click Save.
   
3. Click Done at the upper right.

You can use the Text Macros page to create predefined nursing care plans for use in your organization. You can make these care plans available to all providers, or limit their use to selected providers.

1. Display the Text Macros page: On the Main Menu, click Settings > Clinicals. In the left menu, under Practice Links — Exam, click Text Macros.
2. Click Add new. Additional fields appear.
3. Shortcut — Enter a short, descriptive name for the nursing care plan, beginning with NCP_. This name appears in the search results.
   Note: Starting the name with NCP_ ensures that the care plan appears in the search results when a user enters .ncp to search for nursing care plans.
4. Expansion — Enter the full text for the nursing care plan.
5. Section — Select Nursing Care Plan.
6. Users — To limit the plan to specific users, click Selected and select the users who should access this nursing care plan.
7. Click Add.

You can search for a predefined nursing care plan directly from the patient chart: In the patient chart, click the arrow in the green workflow menu (at the upper right) and select Go To Care Plans. (The options available in the green workflow menu depend on your user role.)
Next, enter .ncp in the Nursing Care Plan search field.

To add your own nursing care plans to this list, enter a free-text nursing care plan and click the star icon to save the plan for future use.

As of Release 17.11, athenahealth provides the following predefined nursing care plans as text macros:

• Activity Intolerance
• Acute Pain
• Anxiety
• Blood Components Therapy
• Chronic Pain
• Decreased Cardiac Output
• Deficient Fluid Volume
• Diarrhea
• Electrolyte Imbalance
• Excess Fluid Volume
• Hygiene Needs
• Impaired Gas Exchange
• Impaired Swallowing
• Impaired Tissue Integrity
• Ineffective Breathing
• Knowledge Deficit
• Nausea
• Nutritional Deficit
• Risk for Fall
• Risk for Impaired Skin Integrity
• Risk for Infection