This is a nursing care plan for brain tumors. A brain tumor is an overgrowth of cells that creates a mass of tissue within the brain, as it grows. It compresses brain tissue causing symptoms ranging in severity from minor headaches to brain death. symptoms will vary based on the size and location of the brain tumor. So what are some nursing considerations that we want to think of while we are taking care of these patients? Well, we want to make sure that we administer any anti-epileptics. These patients are prone to seizures. We want to monitor their vital signs. We want to place this patient on seizure precautions. We want to place them on seizure precautions. We want to monitor and decrease ICP when necessary. If we want to administer medications that are ordered. The desired outcome for this patient is to prevent severe complications. And those complications are seizures, strokes, brain, and death. 

We want to minimize and manage the symptoms. We want to have a successful treatment and removal of the tumor without any residual effects. So, this is just a quick look at brain tumor symptoms by location. So, again, depending on where the tumor is, they will present with different locations. Let’s just take a look at a few of these. So, you see here on the frontal lobe, these are, I’m going to show, they’re going to have difficulty concentrating. They’re going to have communication difficulty, emotional instability. They’re very impulsive. They’re going to have trouble learning new information and lack of inhibition. That’s that impulsiveness. If you look at the occipital lobe here, this is where the vision is located. So they’re going to have some vision loss. They’re not going to be able to visually identify objects. If we look at the cerebellum, which is our balance center, we’re going to have a loss of balance and coordination, difficulty walking, vertigo, vomiting, and brainstem. 

If there’s a tumor there, facial weakness, dysphasia there are going to be some difficulty hearing. This full chart cheat sheet can be located on nursing.com under the brain tumor section. So what are some of these subjective information that the patient is going to provide us just generally based on their brain tumor? So the patient that presents to us may complain of a headache. They may complain of memory loss and they know something is wrong, but they don’t know what it is. They’re going to complain of mood and personality changes. Okay. They’re going to have sensory loss. So they may have a smell, their sense of hearing sight nausea, and also uncoordinated movements, loss of balance. Some of the things that we’re going to notice from these patients, some objective things that we’re going to see is we’re going to see this patient, possibly have some seizures, some altered level of consciousness. So the level of consciousness changes as they’re going to have some dysphasia aphasia, they’re going to have some vision loss. So they may not be able to see they’re going to have an elevated temp. 

They may have some respiratory distress. And finally, we may see  diabetes insipidus. So diabetes insipidus in the case with pituitary involvement. So what are we going to do with this patient? The first thing I think we should do is administer some antiepileptic drugs, brain tumors can put pressure on the neurons within the brain, and it can cause electrical activity to overreact. That is basically what a seizure is. They’re at high risk for seizures, and the antiepileptic drugs are going to increase that seizure threshold. So the first thing we want to do is administer anti-epileptic drugs for seizures, then they say, we’re going to actually place on seizure precautions. And again, this is to safely take care of the patient. Some of the things that we’re going to do is we’re going to raise the side rails up. 

Uh, we are going to pad the side rails. We are going to prevent injury, lower the bed, set up suction at the bedside. These are some of the things that we want to do for seizure precautions. And then we want to do frequent neuro checks. These patients are at risk for changes of level of consciousness. So we can do neuro checks every one to two hours, and they can also have some new life changes with an increased intracranial pressure. So it can be subtle or it can occur rapidly. Those frequent neuro checks are going to catch that next. We want to monitor their respiratory status and protect their airway if needed. They are at risk for respiratory distress. Okay? And because they’re at risk for respiratory distress, we want to give them a good assessment of their respiratory status. And we want to continually do respiratory assessments. 

That way we can intervene if necessary, the airway may be compromised. If the patient has a seizure, then we want to minimize ICP. Remember ICP is bad for brain injuries because it will increase the pressure on the brain. Some things we can do is we can raise that band. Let’s raise the head of the bed up 30 to 45 degrees. Also, we’re going to decrease stimuli and we are going to avoid Valsalva maneuvers. We’re going to put an X through that. We’re going to avoid the valsalva. All of these things can increase ICP, and we’re going to avoid these, okay. Some of the key points that we are going to hone in on for those with patients with brain tumors, a brain tumor is an overgrowth of cells, and it creates a mass in tissues within the brain because of this. Some of the subjective things that the patient is going to present with is the patient is going to complain of headaches. 

They’re going to have some mood and personality changes. They’re going to have some sensory losses. This could be hearing vision, taste, smell. All of these things can be affected. Some objective data that we’re going to gather when we assess this patient is that this patient may have some seizures. They may have an altered level of consciousness, vision loss, diabetes insipidus, or cushing’s triad. This patient is at a risk for seizures. So we want to make sure we place them on seizure precautions. Very important. This patient wants to pad their bed,lower their bed to the lowest height. We want to administer any anti-epileptics and we want to do frequent neuro checks. Remember that’s every one to two hours, if at all possible, we also want to implement measures to decrease ICP. Intracranial pressure is completely counterproductive for brain tumors. So what are you going to do? We’re going to maintain that bed, uh, height at 30 to 45 degrees. We’re going to decrease stimuli and avoid the salvia removed maneuvers. We love you guys; go out and be your best self today, and, as always, happy nursing.