I loved Sharon LaDuke's "Death to Nursing Care Plans!!" (Viewpoint, June). It's long overdue. I've been an army nurse for 21 years and was deployed to Baghdad in 2006 with a group of very young nurses whose average work experience was less than one year. Our educational system had prepared them well to document and write care plans, but it was painfully clear that they hadn't learned the lifesaving assessment skills needed in our profession. When a number of new casualties came into our post on our third day in Iraq, I told them that if I caught anyone touching a chart instead of putting her or his hands on a patient, I would throw the paperwork in the garbage.

We would produce better clinicians if we stopped wasting time on care plans and focused more on clinical assessment.

John T. Groves, Jr.

Fort Riley, KS

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