Nursing Diagnosis List & Reference
Each diagnosis below is written in plain clinical language with its related factors, defining characteristics, goals, and interventions: everything you need to slot it into a care plan.
Write it as: [Diagnosis] related to [factor] as evidenced by [your patient's data]. Pick the diagnosis your assessment supports.
Activity Intolerance
The patient runs out of energy, breath, or cardiovascular reserve before everyday activities are finished.
Acute Pain
A recent, expected-to-be-short experience of unpleasant sensory and emotional discomfort from actual or…
Anxiety
Worry, tension, and physical arousal out of proportion to the situation, triggered by something the patient…
Chronic Pain
Ongoing pain that lasts three months or longer, often without the vital-sign changes seen in acute pain, so…
Constipation
Decreased frequency or difficult passage of hard, dry stool.
Decreased Cardiac Output
The heart is not pumping enough blood forward each minute to keep organs and tissues adequately supplied.
Deficient Fluid Volume
Decreased circulating fluid volume from loss exceeding intake.
Deficient Knowledge
Absence or deficiency of information needed to manage a health condition.
Disturbed Sleep Pattern
A change in the normal amount or quality of sleep that leaves the patient feeling unrested and affects…
Excess Fluid Volume
Increased fluid retention and overload.
Fatigue
A persistent, whole-body sense of tiredness and reduced energy for physical or mental tasks that rest does…
Grieving
The natural emotional, physical, and social response to a real or expected loss, such as a death, a serious…
Hyperthermia
A body temperature raised above the normal range because heat production or retention outpaces the body's…
Imbalanced Nutrition (Below Body Requirements)
The patient is taking in fewer calories, protein, or key nutrients than the body currently needs to function…
Impaired Gas Exchange
The lungs are not moving gases effectively where air meets blood, so blood oxygen falls, carbon dioxide…
Impaired Physical Mobility
The patient cannot move the body or a limb as freely, as far, or with as much control as daily life requires.
Impaired Skin Integrity
A break, wound, or other visible damage in the skin's protective surface layers.
Impaired Urinary Elimination
A disruption in the normal pattern of urination, including changes in frequency, urgency, amount, or control…
Ineffective Airway Clearance
Secretions or obstructions are building up in the airway faster than the patient can cough or clear them out.
Ineffective Breathing Pattern
A pattern of breathing (rate, depth, or effort) that fails to move enough air to meet the body's oxygen and…
Ineffective Coping
A limited capacity to accurately size up stressors, choose workable responses, and use available resources,…
Ineffective Tissue Perfusion
Reduced oxygen delivery to tissues at the capillary level.
Risk for Aspiration
A higher-than-normal chance that food, fluid, saliva, or stomach contents will move into the airway instead…
Risk for Bleeding
Heightened risk of significant blood loss, internally or externally, that could affect the patient's health…
Risk for Falls
A mix of personal and environmental factors that makes a fall, and the injury it could cause, more likely for…
Risk for Infection
Increased vulnerability to invasion by pathogens due to compromised defenses.
Risk for Injury
A greater-than-normal chance of physical harm because personal factors (cognition, mobility, senses) do not…
Risk for Self-Directed Harm
Susceptibility to intentionally self-inflicted, life-threatening injury.
Risk for Unstable Blood Glucose
Susceptibility to variation in blood glucose outside normal range.
Self-Care Deficit
A reduced ability to independently complete activities of daily living such as bathing, dressing, feeding, or…