[A written nursing care plan--a tool for good care?]

The Paihola Hospital is an institutional psychiatric care unit of the North Karelia Hospital District. The hospital has under several years developed nursing documentation by education and peer review. Documentation has improved especially in the following areas: 1) the patient and his family participate in planning, implementing and evaluating the care more than before, 2) data collecting has become more extensive and the patient's total situation is taken into consideration so that his resources, strengths, hopes and dreams will be taken into account in the nursing care plan, 3) the nursing diagnosis has helped us to detach from the medicine and problem centricity, 4) tangible goals and means are always agreed upon together with the patient (= care contract) if it is possible, 5) daily documentation has become evaluative; progress evaluations and final evaluation are a natural part of nursing documentation.