Older adult assessment interview and care plan
Interview an adult aged 65 or over across two sessions, administer four screening tools, rate their ego integrity against Erikson's stage, then derive two nursing diagnoses and a care plan with three goals and two interventions each, in 1,500 words of APA prose.
Editorial process
Last reviewed · August 13, 2026
Interview, instruments, interpretation, plan
This assignment has a clear internal logic that its bullet list obscures: everything gathered in the interview and the instruments exists to justify two nursing diagnoses and a care plan. Read it backwards from there. The narrative material — demographics, education and career, two significant positive periods, a hardship successfully negotiated, two personal strengths, healthy against unhealthy coping, and three pieces of advice for a younger self — is not filler. Strengths and past successful coping are exactly what a realistic plan of care builds on, and the advice question usually surfaces the values the client will actually act on. Two sessions are specified, which gives you the chance to return to anything the first conversation opened up, and to build enough rapport that the harder questions about hardship and loss land well rather than intruding. Plan which material you will cover in each session before you start.
The instruments then supply structured findings: the Geriatric Depression Scale, the Fulmer SPICES, a mini mental state examination and a patient stress questionnaire. You are told to report the findings and explicitly forbidden from copying the assessments into the paper, so each becomes a short prose paragraph giving the score, what that score means, and what it implies clinically. The Erikson rating is an interpretive judgement on a one-to-ten scale from despair to ego integrity, and it needs justifying from what the client actually said rather than from their diagnoses. Two nursing diagnoses follow from the findings, and the plan needs three goals with two interventions each — six interventions in total, each traceable to a finding. Write goals that could be evaluated — a target, a timeframe and a way of knowing — because an aspiration gives the interventions nothing to aim at. The paper runs at least 1,500 words with two scholarly sources beyond the provided materials.
Likely learning objectives
Inferred from the brief — check these against your own rubric.
- 01Conduct a therapeutic assessment interview across more than one session.
- 02Administer and interpret validated geriatric screening instruments.
- 03Summarise instrument findings in prose without reproducing the tools.
- 04Apply Erikson's ego integrity against despair stage to an individual case.
- 05Derive nursing diagnoses and a measurable plan of care from assessment findings.
Read the full question
Review every instruction before using the planning guidance that follows.
Turn the brief into deliverables
- 01Demographics, lifetime education and career, identified by first and last initial only.
- 02Two significant positive times, a successfully negotiated hardship, and two personal strengths.
- 03Healthy against unhealthy coping, with two healthy coping skills used past or present.
- 04Three pieces of advice the client would give their younger self.
- 05Reported findings from the Geriatric Depression Scale, Fulmer SPICES, patient stress questionnaire and mini mental state exam.
- 06An Erikson ego integrity rating out of ten, two nursing diagnoses, and three goals with two interventions each.
From findings to diagnoses to goals
The client and the interview
Initials, age, demographics, education and career, across two sessions.
Life history and strengths
Two positive periods, a negotiated hardship, two strengths, and coping skills.
Advice to a younger self
Three pieces of advice, as a window onto the client's values.
Instrument findings
GDS, Fulmer SPICES, stress questionnaire and mental status exam, each in prose with scores and meaning.
Ego integrity against despair
A one-to-ten rating on Erikson's final stage, justified from interview content.
Diagnoses and plan of care
Two nursing diagnoses, three goals, two interventions per goal.
Validated instruments and the developmental frame
Recommended databases
- Hartford Institute for Geriatric Nursing
- National Institute on Aging
- StatPearls
- CINAHL
- Provided assessment PDFs
Search sequence
- 1.Read the HIGN Try This entry for the Geriatric Depression Scale for scoring and cut-offs.
- 2.Read the HIGN Fulmer SPICES entry for what each domain screens and what a positive finding means.
- 3.Check a clinical source for mental status examination scoring bands before interpreting.
- 4.Read a current account of Erikson's final stage before assigning a rating.
- 5.Search CINAHL for two recent scholarly sources beyond the provided materials.
Reference shortlist
These are authoritative starting points, not a ready-made bibliography. A qualified reviewer must confirm that each source fits the assignment and supports the claim beside which it is cited.
Nothing here is cleared for citation until you have read it.
- 01
The Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS)
Hartford Institute for Geriatric Nursing · 2024
Administration, scoring and cut-offs for the GDS, so the reported score can be interpreted.
- 02
Fulmer SPICES: An Overall Assessment Tool for Older Adults
Hartford Institute for Geriatric Nursing · 2024
What each SPICES domain screens for and what a positive finding implies clinically.
- 03
Mental Status Assessment of Older Adults: The Mini-Cog
Hartford Institute for Geriatric Nursing · 2024
How brief cognitive screening is scored and what it does and does not establish.
- 04
Erikson's Stages of Psychosocial Development
StatPearls, NCBI Bookshelf · 2024
The ego integrity against despair stage, needed to justify the one-to-ten rating.
- 05
What Do We Know About Healthy Aging?
National Institute on Aging · 2025
Evidence on protective factors, which supports goal setting in the plan of care.
Review before submission
Common mistakes
- Pasting the completed assessment forms into the paper, which the instructions forbid.
- Reporting instrument scores without saying what they mean clinically.
- Rating ego integrity without justifying it from what the client said.
- Writing nursing diagnoses that no assessment finding supports.
- Providing three goals but fewer than two interventions for each.
- Using the client's full name instead of first and last initials.
Submission checklist
- The client is identified by first and last initial only, and is aged 65 or over.
- Two interview sessions are evidenced.
- All four instruments are summarised in prose with scores and meaning.
- The Erikson rating is given as a number and justified.
- Two nursing diagnoses and three goals with two interventions each appear.
- At least 1,500 words, APA format, with two scholarly sources beyond the provided materials.
Use this guide to plan and review your own work. Follow your institution's rules and read our academic-integrity policy.
Written by
Aaron Bishop
MA, Education
assignment interpretation and research-methods coaching across disciplines
Aaron leads the EssayCrackers editorial desk. He works on how assignment briefs are read — what a rubric is actually asking for, and where students most often answer a different question than the one set.
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PhD, Rhetoric & Composition
Argumentation and thesis development
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