A nurse is planning care for a patient with a nursing diagnosis of Impaired skin integrity. The ...

ANS: A, D, E
By ranking a patient's nursing diagnoses in order of importance and always monitoring changing signs and symptoms (defining characteristics) of patient problems, you attend to each patient's most important needs and better organize ongoing care activities. Prioritizing the problems, or nursing diagnoses, will help the nurse decide which problem to address first. Symptom pattern recognition from your assessment database and certain knowledge triggers help you understand which diagnoses require intervention and the associated time frame to intervene effectively. Planning requires critical thinking applied through deliberate decision making and problem solving. The nurse avoids setting priorities based solely on physiological factors; other factors should be considered as well. The order of priorities changes as a patient's condition and needs change, sometimes within a matter of minutes.