Does Your Care Plan Tell My Story? Documenting Aspects of Personhood in Long-Term Care

Learning about aspects of one's personhood allows the nurse to know the individual as a person and to individualize the care provided. A pilot project was conducted on a supportive residential care unit to explore why health records in long-term care rarely reveal who the person is. Five nurse participants generated a list of features of an individual's personhood that they felt should be known by members of the team. They subsequently gathered that information from a variety of sources, with documentation in a designated location provided on the plan of care. They were thus able to overcome some of the previously encountered barriers to collecting and documenting the personhood data reflecting their knowledge of the individual as a person. Although nurses were successful in learning who the persons were, changes in approach to care as a result of the new knowledge have not been measured.