How To Write A Nursing Diagnosis (Care Plans)

Nursing care plans are a huge deal in nursing school. As a nursing student, you need to write them just about every day, and they are a huge part of your grade.

 

It’s super important to learn how to write care plans in nursing school, and especially, how to write a nursing diagnosis for your nursing school care plans. 

 

In this video, I’ll walk you through the 3 parts of a nursing diagnosis: the PES statement. 

 

 

The PES nursing diagnosis, or the nursing PES format, stands for: 

 

P: Problem

E: Etiology

S: Symptom

 

The problem part of the PES nursing diagnosis includes the NANDA® nursing diagnosis that fits your patient the best. 

 

The etiology part of the PES nursing diagnosis is the cause of the problem (with the problem being the NANDA® nursing diagnosis). When you write this etiology out, it’s called the “related to” factor or the r/t. It’s important that this etiology (the related-to part of the nursing diagnosis) gets to the root cause of the problem. 

 

The symptoms part of the PES nursing diagnosis is the signs and symptoms that support the problem (the NANDA® nursing diagnosis). So this is where you will simply list all of the signs and symptoms your patient had that relate to the original problem. The part of the nursing diagnosis starts with “as evidenced by,” or aeb. 

 

 

Here is how to write a nursing diagnosis: 

 

NANDA® nursing diagnosis (choose one from your care plan book) r/t whatever is actually CAUSING the problem (ex. the pathophysiology) aeb the signs and symptoms the patient had that relate to this problem. 

 

 

So, if you’ve struggled with how to write a nursing diagnosis in nursing school, then this video is for you!