Care Plan Standardization for Older Adults Opportunities for Nursing Leadership

Care plans guide and document achievement of short-and long-term goals. However, most care plans are discipline oriented, document medical problems, and lack person-centered information such as care preferences. The current authors' goal was to explore the status of comprehensive care plans and the future application of sharing data among health care providers and settings. Semi-structured interviews were conducted among a variety of professionals in six geographically diverse settings to learn the status and performance of care plans. Various biases, regular and irregular omissions, and lack of long-term perspectives in the care plan generation processes were found. These deficits support the need for developing comprehensive standardized care plans to improve access, coordination, and quality of care for older adults. Nurses are in an ideal position to lead local, state, and national initiatives to drive policies for comprehensive care plans that will improve access to and quality of care delivery to older adults.