Establishment of care-plans and pathways is a method to standardize surgical care and to plan nursing care with daily goals.

These care plans result in a nursing care more structured and focused than working with conventional care. Care plans are a working tool for nurses and describe in detail what to do, what the observations are, nursing duties and goals for oral intake, hours out of bed, and planned day of discharge and nutrition. Furthermore, the care plan provides documentation of nursing care and helps to eliminate undesirable variations in postoperative care. In this section, you will find below examples of selected care plans.

An example of a nursing care map after elective colonic resection on the first postoperative day (24-48 hours postoperatively). Hvidovre Hospital, Copenhagen

Nursing care program – Colonic resection Hvidovre Hospital, Copenhagen

Enhanced Recovery Programme St Mark’s Hospital

Do we miss a good example of a care plan?

Please contact us with any other examples that you would like us to publish in this section.