Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD)

In the community lead pulmonary rehabilitation, (Linda Nici et al., 2006) says, nurses have shown their effectiveness across many settings around the country. (Griffiths et al. 2001) has produced a study that showed a saving in treatment of £152 for every patient treated by the pulmonary rehabilitation programme. Therefore, if a patient could be treated effectively as an outpatient in the home environment, this could enable the ambulance service to contribute to the referral proses, rather than taking the patient to the hospital for assessment by a Doctor. This would allow critically ill patients accesses to the intensive care

Background: Comorbidities are common and significant in COPD, often contributing to symptoms, exacerbations, hospital admissions and mortality.

The nursing role in pulmonary rehabilitation includes one on one sessions with patients to cover more in-depth education of the disease process including actual anatomy and physiology of the pulmonary system. After that has been covered then the nurses can focus on causes of COPD, symptoms of the disease and management of them, diet, pulmonary exercise, medications for COPD and compliance issues, and most importantly smoking cessation. The nurses will likely require the patient to give return demonstrations of the medication use and pulmonary exercises such as pursed lip breathing (Mohammadi, Jowkar, Khankeh & Tafti, 2013).

COPD is one of the many preventable diseases that health care providers deal with. Nurses needs to familiarize themselves with this disease process and how it affects the body, preventative methods, and treatment plans, so that they can be well informed when it comes to patient education. Education is a big part of nursing and considering COPD is the third leading cause of death, nurses will be in frequent contact with

Accordingly, to this information of COPD: Coping with COPD from PubMed Health, this article provides the early stages, progression, coping and emergency plan and this disease affects family and friends. It is written answering the question, what to expect from COPD and how to manage this lung disease? A team of health care professionals, scientists and editors, and experts (Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), 2015), provides education of how this disease may affect daily lives, how to live with this disease and what causes

The team will navigate patients through the program, resources and pulmonary rehabilitation. The registered nurse will meet with the patient prior to discharge to evaluate and refer them to the appropriate services along with the social worker, which may find alternative way to pay for patients medication and other support services that may be offered. The nurse practitioner and the respiratory therapist will see the patient within 48 of hours upon admission into program. The nurse practitioner and respiratory therapist will evaluate the needs at home and enroll the patient in pulmonary rehabilitation, which will be part of the care offered to all patients. Resources for the patient will consist of a 24-hour hotline for patients who may need to seek medical advice prior to going to the emergency room. Patient will be supplied with emergency medications for home use if symptoms begin to appear. A nurse practitioner will be available to advice the patient in intervention with the emergency medications is indicated and advice if treatment may need to be continued in the emergency room. With the protocols in place for medications, the patient will be seen within 12 hours if use of the emergency medications were taken in the home. The nurse practitioner will update the electronic medical chart of the patient to document

Self-efficacy, for the purpose of this study, may be defined as a person’s optimistic self-belief. This is the belief that a person can develop the skills to perform new or difficult tasks to cope with changes in health and functioning. When a person perceives self-efficacy, it will facilitate goal-setting, effort, investment, persistence, overcoming obstacles and recovery from disappointments and failures. It can be regarded as a positive outlook or proactive way to handle stress factors. It is the ability to successfully cope with health changes, and implies an internal and stable acceptance of changes and ability to successfully adapt to those changes. Perceived self-efficacy is functional in

In order to treat this disease, smokers need to participate in smoking cessation which involves the most important step, to stop smoking. Medications to help treat COPD include bronchodilators, such as inhalers, which relax muscles around the air way. Inhaled steroids can reduce air way inflammation and help prevent exacerbations. Lung therapies include oxygen therapy which will help increase blood oxygen. If severe enough, surgeries such as lung volume reduction surgery, lung transplants, and a bullectomy may be

(Scullion, 2010) The patient simply may not understand what is being asked of them as the term adherence in-relation to COPD expands above and beyond simply taking medication, it requires extensive lifestyle changes. With that in mind, Nurses and other Multi-disciplinary team members must seek concordance from patients in apposed to adherence within a patient centered approach to care. Taking a concordant approach means that patients are informed about their condition and treatment options. It creates a partnership, which involves the patient in the decision making process and allows them to take responsibility for monitoring their own condition and communicating back. (Scullion, 2010)

An important nursing intervention for a patient with COPD is to improve functional capacity of the lungs with oxygen use (ANA, 2012). An oxygen saturation value of 90% or higher is the optimal goal for the patient (ANT, 2012). Patients should be instructed on how to use oxygen properly and safely,

The studies that have been done thus far on COPD discharge care bundles looks promising. Each study may have had a variation in some of the minor steps in doing the COPD care bundle, but their COPD discharge care bundles contained the same major

Millions of individuals suffer and die from Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) each year in our nation. Currently, there is no cure for COPD; therefore, the most beneficial goal for these patients is to provide enhanced quality of life that includes limited admissions to the hospital setting and decreased exacerbations. Management of this disease process through proper patient education and multidisciplinary collaboration improves a COPD patient’s ability to maintain a healthier state of life as well as decrease their chance of a costly hospital readmission (Chamberlain, Lau, Siracuse, 2017).

Just as well, the nurse caring for one with COPD must communicate the need to start a safe exercise program, such as walking, and upper body strength training to ease the use of accessory muscles (Nettina, 2013). These task will improve the patient’s ability to perform ADL’s, increase strength of accessory muscles; thus lessening symptoms and reducing episodes of exacerbation (Nettina, 2013). Yet another teaching point the nurse must stress is the significance of receiving timely vaccinations (influenza and pneumococcal) and using antimicrobial agents to limit respiratory infections (Nettina,

Through the convenience sampling, 90 clients were recruited as research participants were in the waiting room of the respiratory clinic. 60 subjects agreed to attend a support group for socialization with each other. 30 of 60 clients were assigned to participate in the presentation and therapeutic exercises by the instructor. The instructor group divided into halves: 15 clients received instructions with family caregiver and the other clients without a caregiver. The second 30 clients received written materials and allowed to access the website for video presentation and exercises. Half of website group assigned to the family caregiver and the other half without a caregiver. The last 30 subjects were assigned as a control group, and half of these clients received usual care with family caregiver and other 15 clients without a family caregiver. The data was collected by the pulmonary functional status survey, 30 items, five points, Likert-type scale.

Nurses are a vital component in patient care. The importance of conducting efficient nursing assessments is critical in order to provide both patient-centered care and safe, effective patient healing. Nurses are often responsible for taking care of patients with very complex disease processes. They frequently provide care to patients with illnesses such as Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD). According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in 2014, approximately 6.8 million adults were diagnosed with COPD within the Unites States. The completion of proper assessments and initiation of interventions for these patients are crucial in order to prevent further complications of the illness.