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My Personal Environmental Assessment

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Environmental Assessment After the general assessment on my patient when I was able to use SPICES tool, I had the opportunity to visit her apartment, to evaluate her environment, focusing on safety, fall prevention, and any supplementary help available. My patient is living by herself and she is independent in all activities of daily living. She is a widow and her kids are living far away from her and they are in touch with her almost every day via telephone. Her apartment is her universe and from time to time she is visited by relatives. Also, she has a neighbor, a retired nurse who is checking on her almost daily. She is trying to keep up with all housekeeping work, but her recent umbilical hernia surgery prevents her from keeping her house …show more content…

Therefore, I insisted on talking to her about her depression. She told me that her husband passed away a few years ago and even if her daughters are living away from her she still have a good relationship with them. She has some relatives living in the same town with her but they are also older people and she is in touch with them via phone. Her neighbor is visiting her almost every day to check on her and she has some contacts with the local church which after few questions I find out that actually she can have a lot of support from her church but she doesn’t want to ask for help because she thinks everybody has problems and she doesn’t want to bother them. I talked with her about how important is for her to stay in contact with other people, to meet with them and have activities together. Her depression will go away when she will go outside to take a walk and because her apartment is closed with a park she can go there and spend some time with other people of her age. Also, I encouraged her to continue to read and I offered myself to bring a book on my next visit so we can talk together about the book and in this way her thoughts will be changed and she will have another prospect of

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