OBJECTIVE: To identify the nursing diagnoses and the altered Functional Health Patterns (FHP) in patients admitted to a medical-surgical unit. METHOD: A FHP guideline was used to interview, perform physical examinations, and to conduct chart reviews of 60 inpatients (female = 100%; mean age 49.7±19.0 year). Nursing diagnoses were declared by consensus among four researchers on nursing diagnoses with expertise on medical-surgical nursing. A total of 337 nursing diagnoses in 48 categories were identified. The most frequent nursing diagnoses were risk for infection (58.3%), pain (50.0%), constipation (41.6%), and activity intolerance (35.0%). The most frequent FHP were activity-exercise (19.9%), nutritional-metabolic (19.6%), and health perception-health management (18.7%). CONCLUSION: Providing care for the medical-surgical patient requires a wide range of nursing knowledge and skills.
Nursing diagnosis; Adult health; Inpatients; Prevalence; Evaluation
