A User Friendly Guide to Successful Implementation of Care Mapping

The goal of care mapping in the clinical setting in undergraduate nursing education is to determine the student's ability to collect, present, and connect relevant data points in order to evaluate and understand the medical plan of care and to develop a priority based nursing plan of care. This same process can be utilized across all health science education programs. The purpose of this chapter is to share how the author has modified the traditional concept map tool to a more user friendly format and to present a process of implementation that may be used in the clinical setting as part of any undergraduate health science program. The benefits of such an implementation are that of more enriched learning to include the development of critical thinking skills, the use of a common sense approach, and the recognition of the patient as a holistic being.