A nursing student expresses some confusion about identifying the appro

A nursing student expresses some confusion about identifying the appropriate nursing diagnosis for a specific client. Which of the following responses by the clinical instructor is most instruc-tional?

1. “After defining the client’s symptomatology, eliminate those nursing diagnoses that are not supported by the database.”
2. “Assess your client and then select the nursing diagnosis that has the greatest number of observable defining characteristics.”
3. “After assessing the client, compare their symptoms carefully to the defining characteristic of the nursing diagnosis in order to support or eliminate it as appli-cable.”
4. “With experience you will become skilled at identifying the defining characteris-tics of a nursing diagnosis in your client. Until that time use a nursing diagnosis book to help in the selection process.”

ANSWER

ANS: 3
After assessing the client, always examine the defining characteristics in your database carefully to support or eliminate a nursing diagnosis. Although the other options are correct, they do not provide as concise an explanation as “after assessing the client, compare their symptoms carefully to the defining characteristic of the nursing diagnosis in order to support or eliminate it as appli-cable.”