Nursing Process: Goals and Purposes

Goals/Purposes of the Nursing Process

• To identify the client's health states and actual or potential health care problems or needs through assessment
• To establish plans to meet the identified needs
• To deliver specific nursing interventions to meet those needs
• To apply the best available caregiving evidence and promote human function and responses to health and illness
• To protect nurses against legal problems related to nursing care when the standards of the nursing process are followed correctly
• To help nurses perform in a systematically organized way their practice
• To establish a database about the client's health status, health concerns, response to illness, and the ability to manage health care needs

Scope/Focus of the Nursing Process

• The process is holistic and addresses physical, emotional, psychosocial, psychological, developmental, and spiritual well-being of the patient
• The nursing process involves looking at the whole patient at all times
• It personalizes the patient, focusing on the individual rather than just their condition (e.g. not just "the diabetic in room 4B")
• It forces the health care team to observe and interact with the patient, not just the task they are performing (e.g. not just performing a dressing change or bed bath)