NANDA, my dear NANDA

It's really funny that I stumbled upon this after I recently posted my own (not nearly as funny) nursing diagnosis story. I had to repost it here. Only my nursing school buddies can fully appreciate what follows. I typed something into google looking up NANDA and this blog popped up. I'm not quite sure why I clicked on it, and this isn't the most recent post, but I laughed pretty hard. Too bad I can't take credit.

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Mostly True Stories: Tales from nursing school, travel, labor and delivery, and the bathroom

Monday, November 20, 2006

"...as evidenced by: a story from nursing school"

Nursing diagnoses crack me up. They are composed of some of the least economic writing ever to find its way into print. A nursing diagnosis is the “it was a dark and stormy night” of the clinical world. Take, for instance, this ND (short, of course, for nursing diagnosis): Imbalanced nutrition: more than body requirements. That means fat! Big fat patient! Fat because he ate too much! Now it might be more sensitive and descriptive to say overweight or obese, this I will admit. But, imbalanced nutrition: more than body requirements?

Nursing is a defensive, insular field. Nurses are particularly defensive of our position as professionals. And it is easy to see how that defensiveness came about. We are a profession dominated by women, often viewed by the public as assistants to doctors – and we do assist doctors at times! It is good and necessary that we continue to define ourselves as professionals. But these nursing diagnoses – they ARE funny. Too many words.

After writing care plans for three and a half semesters, I find that I sometimes switch into ND language without warning. I occasionally automatically communicate with nursing diagnoses or in a care plan format. On my way to a study session at J’s house recently, I realized that I was going to be quite late. I called her on my cell phone, “J, I’m at risk for study session tardiness related to not leaving the house on time as manifested by me not being there yet!”

“Oh no,” she said, “that puts me at risk for imbalanced nutrition: more than body requirements related to me eating all the cookies I made for the study group as evidenced by the cookies already being half gone!”

I replied, “that sounds like ineffective health maintenance to me.”

“No,” she countered, “you obviously have a knowledge deficit.”

“I’m in spiritual distress!”

“You are experiencing ineffective denial!”

It just degenerated from there.

-Posted by Working Girl at 2:32 PM