Concept mapping is an effective new approach to organizing care planning in a health-care setting. It enables nursing students and clinicians to visualize more clearly the interrelationships among medical diagnoses, nursing diagnoses, assessment data, and treatments. Pamela Schuster's Concept Mapping: A Critical-Thinking Approach to Care Planning details a systematic process of identifying and assessing the big picture by beginning with a patient's major health problem, and then devising a game plan to solve the problem.

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