Nursing Care Plan (NCP) for Anxiety
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Outline
NCPIn this lesson, you will learn how to write a nursing care plan for Generalized Anxiety Disorder and the associated nursing interventions and rationales. You will also learn the pathophysiology and etiology of anxiety. We will go over making an assessment, the concepts of choosing a nursing diagnosis, formulating a care plan, writing an implementation, and making a proper evaluation.
With successful completion of this lesson, you will be able to:
- Define the pathophysiology of anxiety
- List signs and symptoms of anxiety
- State the desired outcome for a patient with anxiety
- Write a nursing care plan for anxiety
- Describe how to assess a patient with anxiety
- Determine the nursing diagnosis of a patient with anxiety
- Create a plan and goals for a patient with anxiety
- Write a nursing implementation for a patient anxiety
- Evaluate the effectiveness of your nursing care plan
- Understand and explain the nursing interventions and rationales associated with a nursing care plan for anxiety
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Pathophysiology of Anxiety
Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) is a mental health disorder characterized by excessive, persistent, and unrealistic worry about everyday things. Anxiety produces fear, worry, and a constant feeling of being overwhelmed. People with anxiety disorder find these feelings hard to control, cause severe disruption to their life, and experience anxiety regularly.
People experiencing generalized anxiety disorder describe feelings of fear, worry, apprehensiveness, and irritability. They may also report physical symptoms such as fatigue, restlessness, muscular tension, and difficulty sleeping.
Signs and Symptoms of Anxiety
Anxiety can occur suddenly or gradually over time. Anxiety may last a few seconds or span years, although longer durations are more characteristic of anxiety disorders. Anxiety can range from a short, intense panic attack to a long-standing, persistent sense of fear.
Generalized anxiety disorder can manifest with both psychological and physical (or somatic) symptoms.
Symptoms of Anxiety
- Excessive anxiety and worry for at least six months
- Difficulty controlling worrying thoughts
- Easily fatigued from excessive worrying
- Difficulty in concentrating on anything but anxious thoughts
- Muscle tension
- Sleep disruption
- Irritability
- Disruption of social and work-life
- Feeling nervous, restless, or tense
- A sense of impending danger, panic, or doom
- Avoiding things that trigger anxiety
Signs of Anxiety
- Increased heart rate
- Breathing rapidly (hyperventilation)
- Sweating
- Trembling
- Feeling weak or tired
- Trouble concentrating
- Trouble sleeping
- Gastrointestinal (GI) problems
Risk Factors
Anxiety can affect anyone. However, these factors may increase the risk of developing an anxiety disorder:
- Trauma: Children and adults who experience or witness traumatic events are at higher risk of developing an anxiety disorder.
- Family History: Having blood relatives with an anxiety disorder. Anxiety disorders can run in families.
- Stress: Big life changes, ongoing stressful situations with work or family, financial pressure, and relationship problems trigger anxiety.
- Medical Issue: Having a chronic health condition or severe illness can induce ongoing worry and fear.
- Mental Health: People experiencing other mental health disorders often develop an anxiety disorder.
- Substance Abuse: Drug or alcohol abuse can cause or magnify anxiety.
Complications
Generalized Anxiety Disorder can lead to, or worsen, other mental and physical conditions, such as:
- Depression
- Substance Abuse
- Insomnia
- Gastrointestinal problems
- Chronic pain
- Suicide
Etiology of Anxiety
Twenty-five percent (25%) of GAD cases are genetic, with a first-degree relative also diagnosed with anxiety.
Most cases of anxiety disorder appear to be caused by an interaction of biology, psychology, and socio-environmental factors (biopsychosocial) factors. Patients with a genetic vulnerability combined with stressful or traumatic situations produce clinically significant symptoms.
Psychological reasons for anxiety can range from an extreme conflict in mind or personality to a learned response or behavior. Other psychological reasons can include a history of trauma, abuse, or different stressful life situations.
Anxiety can also result from general or unrecognized medical conditions such as diabetes or depression or substance-induced such as medications or substance abuse.
Desired Outcome
- Patient understands their anxiety and worries, and fears decrease.
- Patient improving coping skills and exploring other coping mechanisms.
- The patient accepts a referral or volunteers to see a mental health professional for long-term treatment of their anxiety.
- The patient begins taking any medications as prescribed.
Writing a Nursing Care Plan for Anxiety
Writing a Nursing Care Plan for Generalized Anxiety Disorder is one of the most common assignments in nursing college. They start immediately after a patient is admitted and document all activities and changes in their condition. These plans help enhance quality outcomes and consistent health care delivery. They can also be a great communication tool among nurses, healthcare professionals, patients, and families.
A good nursing care plan for anxiety is patient-centered and anchored in evidence-based practices.
Performing an Assessment
Making an individualized assessment begins by focusing on the available background information of the patient: health history, current health status, psychological state, and physical health data.
Subjective Data
The subjective data for anxiety is information or symptoms reported by the patient. These include feelings, perceptions, and concerns obtained by the patient interview. In the case of anxiety, a patient might report feeling:
- Persistent worry
- Overthinking plans and worst-case solutions
- Indecisiveness
- Difficulty sleeping
- Perceiving situations as threatening
- Inability to relax
- Difficulty concentrating
- Fatigue
- Abdominal pain
- Headaches
- Chest pain or tightness
- Shortness of breath
Objective Data:
The objective data for anxiety is observable and measurable data, or signs, obtained through observation, physical examination, and laboratory or diagnostic testing. In the case of anxiety, a patient may present with:
- Muscle tension
- Sweating
- Vomiting
- Diarrhea
Making a Diagnosis
A nursing diagnosis for anxiety is our basis for establishing and carrying out a nursing care plan. After performing a proper assessment, formulate a nursing diagnosis based on problems associated with the anxiety. The nursing diagnosis will be your clinical judgment about the patient’s health conditions or needs.
Select the appropriate nursing diagnostic label from the NANDA-I list of approved nursing diagnostic statements that best identify with anxiety. One or more nursing diagnoses are acceptable.
Creating a Plan
Care plan goals form the basis of nursing intervention. These goals are what the patient will do and should be a clearly stated, easy to measure, realistic description of the patient’s expected outcomes.
In the case of anxiety, a plan may include:
- Understanding their anxiety and treatment
- Work on coping skills
- Agree to follow-up with a mental health professional
- Take medications as prescribed
Writing an Implementation
Implementations are actions and activities you will take to achieve the nursing plan goals.
In the case of anxiety, an implementation may include:
- Educate the patient on anxiety and their treatment
- Help patient learn coping skills
- Assist with finding a mental health professional
- Administer medications as prescribed
Evaluating Goals
The evaluation of our nursing plan for GAD involves an organized, ongoing, and intentional assessment of the achievement of set goals and desired outcomes. This evaluation process helps determine whether to continue, stop, or change the selected interventions.
In our anxiety example, our evaluation might include:
- The patient understood General Anxiety Disorder and their treatment
- The patient learned new coping skills and has committed to practicing them
- The patient made an appointment to follow up with a psychiatrist
- The patient took prescribed medications
Nursing Interventions and Rationales
| Assess vitals | Determine a baseline for the effectiveness of interventions and rule out other medical conditions such as hypertension or fever. |
| Obtain 12-lead EKG | Get an EKG to rule out cardiac etiology of symptoms. “Anxiety attacks” or “panic attacks” from GAD may mimic the symptoms of a coronary event with chest pain or tightness and shortness of breath. |
| Determine if the patient is having homicidal or suicidal ideations | Maintain safety for the patient and others around them |
Establish trust with the patient
|
Especially when a patient has a high level of anxiety, establishing trust can help the patient calm down and make treatment more effective.
Never say “calm down” or “just relax”, it’s not that easy. |
| Maintain a calm and comforting demeanor while working with the patient | Patients often have the feeling of being out of control. Being around someone who is calm and in control of the present situation may help the patient feel safer and more at ease. |
Be present
|
The presence of someone the patient trusts provides positive encouragement to handle situations. Being present also helps ensure the patient’s safety. |
| Provide opportunities for patients to assist with decision making, but avoid decisions that may require concentrated thought or maybe life-changing | Allowing the patient to help make minor decisions can help them regain control of their emotions. For example, start with giving them a choice between music therapy or guided imagery. |
Use desensitization approaches carefully
|
Desensitization helps the patient take control of worry or fears. Start small with safe situations and work up to those that cause higher anxiety.
Many times this is coordinated by a psychiatric/mental health provider. |
| Administer medications appropriately (benzodiazepines) | Medications can be a quick response to high stress or anxiety and help calm the patient during therapy or desensitization. Monitor for signs of addiction or withdrawal. |
| Avoid allowing personal thoughts, feelings, or anxiety to interfere with care | Anxiety is somewhat contagious and contributing your own emotions can make a patient’s symptoms and worry more exacerbated. |
Reference
- Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5)
- ADAA
- Medscape Anxiety Disorders
- UpToDate Generalized Anxiety Disorder
- NCBI
- CDC
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Example Nursing Diagnosis For Nursing Care Plan (NCP) for Anxiety
- Anxiety: This diagnosis directly addresses the patient’s emotional state and feelings of anxiety. It focuses on assessing and managing anxiety symptoms.
- Ineffective Coping: Anxiety can lead to ineffective coping mechanisms. This diagnosis emphasizes the need to support and improve coping strategies.
- Risk for Impaired Social Interaction: Anxiety can impact social relationships. This diagnosis highlights the potential for impaired social interactions due to anxiety.
Transcript
All right. Let’s work through an example Nursing Care Plan that’s really specific to kind of mental health. And so specifically we’re going to talk about anxiety. So when we talk about this hypothetical patient, please know that a patient with anxiety is also probably going to have a ton of other issues going on. They might actually have something that’s more medical than, than mental health related, but right now we’re really just gonna focus specifically on the anxiety and how we can help this patient manage what’s going on in their world. So most of what you’re going to see is going to be subjective. So you have this patient with anxiety, they’ve got persistent worry, they’re always worried about something. Things seem to be overwhelming. They’re overthinking things. They might be thinking, worst case scenario all the time, it’s really not a fun way to live, guys.
Some objective data might be insomnia. You might notice your patient’s awake all night long. They’re not sleeping at all. we might see someone who’s indecisive and I’m going to put this kind of right in between because it could be reported in decisiveness or you could notice it yourself, right? they may have some muscle tension or even that tension can turn into pain or headaches, right? Just depending on what’s going on with that patient. they’re going to be fatigued because this is really, like I said, it’s kind of not a fun way to live. They’re going to have difficulty concentrating. They’re going to have poor focus, poor concentration. And then the big thing here is you have a huge risk for a couple of problems. One being panic attacks or anxiety attacks, and those can really start presenting physically. You’re going to present with chest pain. You’re going to present with palpitations.
All of the, the mental anxiety that’s going on starts to present physically in your body. So that’s when you start getting these panic or anxiety attacks. And the other risks that we have that’s major is for any kind of self harm or possibly even suicidal ideations, especially when you start to get very overwhelmed with life. This becomes a risk for sure. So just remember, anxiety patients tend to be very overwhelmed with everything that’s going on. They tend to have trouble coping and concentrating, tend to have trouble dealing with stressful situations. So we’re going to take all of our data. Like I said, we’re focusing specifically on what’s related to anxiety, and to figure out what our problems are. So our major problem for this patient is they’re really struggling with their mood. They’re struggling to manage their emotions, they’re struggling to manage their thoughts.
And that of course can be distressing for this patient. They may need to improve their coping skills when something stressful happens. They might need to be able to say, hey, I know how to handle this now. another problem we have is the physical symptoms. Remember, anxiety can manifest physically, whether it’s chest pain, palpitations, shortness of breath, they might end up with a headache. That muscle tension, that manifestation has physical symptoms, is definitely a problem. And then of course, a huge problem is that risk for self harm. We don’t want them to hurt themselves in any, any, any way. And so when we think about a priority for a patient with anxiety, what is our number one concern? I was their number one concern is the physical risk to this patient. And so I’m just going to say safety. Safety is my number one concern.
We can deal with their mood and emotions after that. But my number one focus is going to be making sure that this patient doesn’t hurt themselves and that they’re physically safe. So ask her how questions again, how do we know it was a problem? This is where we just data link. We go back to our data and we say this piece of data says that this is a problem. So then how are we going to address it? What kinds of things are we going to do for this patient? Well, we said safety was number one, right? So why don’t we first just assess for self harm or suicidal ideations. We need to assess, we need to ask those questions. Be Very straightforward with your questions. Have you had any thoughts of hurting yourself or anyone else? It’s so important that we’re very clear when we asked this question because we need to get a straight answer from the patient and if they do, we need to put them on suicide precautions or self harm precautions.
Whatever your facility does, we need to keep them safe. The other thing we want to assess is any of their physical symptoms. to make sure that we can rule out any other problems. So we might get a 12 lead to rule out their chest pain. We might, evaluate their back pain or their headache for something else. Right? We want to rule out anything other than anxiety as a source of the problem. Probably going to give some meds, some antianxiety medications as ordered. Religious helps decrease those leveling of anxiety. And we always want to make sure we stay with them. So if they’re starting to have these panic attacks, if they’re starting to really struggle with anxiety, stay with the patient to make sure we keep them safe. And then also we start to look at things like establishing trust. We start to look at helping them express their concerns and their emotions, we might even assist them in helping identify some coping strategies, right?
So coping looks so different for everybody that we can’t just educate, you know, it’s not just educate, right? It’s not just, hey, here’s a, here’s a list of possible things in my work. We actually need to help them talk through it and help them identify what is going to work for them. So how do I know it worked? Right? We go back to our data, we say, well, how did I know it was a problem? My patient told me they were anxious. So decreased reports of anxiety, right? They’re going to say, my anxiety is much better. I feel much better now. we also know we want to keep the patients safe and free from injury or harm. And I think because we’re really wanting to help them identify these coping strategies, we could probably have them verbalize or choose some coping strategies they’re going to use.
So we wanna make sure that they are reporting that their anxiety is better, that they’re safe and free from injury and that they’re talking through how they’re going to handle this anxiety. That makes sense. So let’s translate that into some high level priority concepts here. We gotta be concise to communicate what the problems are. So number one problem, we said safety, we’ve got to keep them from injury, we’ve got to make sure they’re not physically unsafe. And then I would say at that point we can start looking at their mood or their emotions. They’re an effect. Make sure we’re addressing the actual anxiety itself. And then I think start looking at coping strategies. So protect them from harm, address the current issues and then worry about future issues. Does that make sense in terms of prioritizing these? So keep them safe, address what’s currently going on and help them decide how they’re going to deal if it happens again.
All right so now lets transcribe, let’s get this on paper. So we set our top priorities where safety, mood and affect and coping. So this is just where we link all of our data together. We’re connect connecting the dots between our data, our interventions and rationales and our expected outcomes. So how do we know that safety was a concern? Well, we know that this patient might have these physical symptoms, these panic attacks, and when you get in that mode where your chest starts to hurt, you feel like the world is closing in on you, you really never know what’s going to happen at that point. So that’s a problem. We know they possibly have suicidal or self harm ideations and they possibly have that insomnia. Insomnia can definitely, a lack of sleep can definitely cause a lot of problems for this patient. So what are we going to do?
Well, we’re going to rule out other sources of these symptoms, right? So we might get a 12 lead. We’re going to assess those ideations and possibly implement suicide precautions if necessary. Again, we’re trying to ensure that these symptoms aren’t cardiac in nature or that there’s not any other source of those physical symptoms. And then of course we want to prevent self injury. And if necessary, you could possibly administer meds, uh, for insomnia specifically so that we can try to increase the ability for them to sleep. So overall, the expected outcome here is based on what our original goal was, right? Which is just to keep that patient safe and free from injury, free from any complications of some of these physical symptoms. So now that we’ve addressed their safety, we can start addressing their current emotional needs. So they have this persistent worry, this trouble concentrating.
They’re probably fatigued and they’re definitely overwhelmed. So what kinds of things can we do to address their current emotional state? We can absolutely give anxiolytics or anti anxiety medications. We establish trust and rapport with them. We provide an opportunity for them to express their emotions and express their feelings. So the goal here is that we would improve their overall symptoms and decrease their levels of anxiety by establishing trust so that they don’t get so overwhelmed when they have those conversations. So ultimately the goal here is just that the patient order report decreased levels of anxiety. They’re going to tell me I’m feeling a little better. I’m not feeling so anxious. I’m having an easier time concentrating and feeling less overwhelmed. We just want those symptoms to be decreased. So now let’s look at coping. Remember coping. We’re kind of thinking future, right? We’re thinking how are they going to handle this if it happens again?
So how do we know that they might have an issue coping? Well, maybe they’re always thinking, worst case scenario, when something comes up, they’re thinking though this is the worst thing that could possibly happen, it’s probably going to happen. They’re having trouble deciding, so how are they going to, how are they going to go about their life if they can’t make decisions? Right? And they’re just overthinking everything. So what can we do for this patient who’s really having trouble coping? Well, we can stay with them when anxiety is really high. And again, assist them to identify coping strategies that will work for them. So again, all we’re trying to do here and the reason we’re doing these things is to try to help that patient cope with those stressful situations. So my biggest goal here is going to be to have this patient verbalize the coping strategies that they’re going to use in the future.
I had a patient once who was so concerned that two wasn’t going to be allowed to go home until she was happy go lucky and had no problems. And I told her, I said, nobody’s expecting you to feel wonderful right now and be perfectly happy right now, but what we want to know is that you’re going to be able to cope in a healthy way in the future. She had actually come in with some self harm and so I said, nobody expects you to feel wonderful. They just expect you to tell us how you’re going to safely manage when this happens again. Okay? So I love this idea of helping them identify what’s gonna work for them. All right, so let’s just review our five step process. We always collect all of our information first. That’s our assessment data. We take that information and analyze it and choose what’s relevant, choose what tells us there’s a problem and figure out what our priorities are.
Then we ask those how questions so that we can actually plan our interventions and figure out what we would be looking for. Get that into your concise terms so that you can easily, quickly communicate what the problems are for your patient and then get it on paper, whatever form you want to use, whatever template you want to use, if you’re documenting it into an electronic medical record, either way, just put on paper what your plan is for your patient. So I hope this was helpful to work through a care plan for a patient with anxiety. Again, this is an isolated care plan for a hypothetical patient who only has anxiety, right? So I’m sure there’s plenty of other things that they may have going on. So remember to look at the big picture, and choose priorities as a whole holistically for your patient. Make sure you check out the rest of the examples in this course, as well as our whole nursing care plan library. Now go out and be our best selves today, guys. And as always, happy nursing.
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