Nurses need to start being more creative. Think outside the box. No more, or at least not so often, blindly following a care plan book. Those books have evidence based interventions that are a wonderful start – but we need to figure out how to help patients embrace healthy change and implement the basic concepts included in the care plan book. Get past the road blocks they have.

Think about the patients you care for and their families. 

1. Identify one of the common problems you see (medication compliance for a certain medication, reasons for readmissions, smoking, etc).

2. Identify barriers for why this problem reoccurs.

3. Create interventions that may help make meaningful steps toward improving these problems. Consider what you observed in your patients/families. Think about common road blocks for healthy lifestyles. Describe at least two interventions you could try to make some meaningful first steps toward improving the problem(s) you identified.

4. What could you do as a first step to help busy families adopt healthy lifestyle behaviors?