Which phase involves developing a plan of care to achieve the goal?

• A. Evaluation
• B. Nursing diagnosis
• C. Planning
• D. Assessment

Answer: (C)

Developing a plan of care to achieve the goal is the planning phase. After gathering data and identifying the patient’s problems, you create a patient-specific care plan that outlines measurable goals and the interventions needed to reach them. This phase sets priorities, determines the actions to take, and specifies how progress will be measured and timed. It sits between diagnosing and implementing, and it guides what happens during evaluation to see if the goals were met. For context: assessment is about collecting data, nursing diagnosis is turning that data into a problem statement, implementation is putting the plan into action, and evaluation checks whether the outcomes were achieved and informs any necessary adjustments.