Nurse Patient Assessment

A person’s life can end at any age. They can depart quickly or slowly. End of life care, also known as palliative care, is the care of patients that are not only in their final hours or days but the patients with a terminal illness that has become incurable. End of life care takes into mind what the patient desires so it is recommended that they consider an advanced care plan also known as an advance directive and living will. These documents allow the patient to formulate decisions on the future of their care if, at any point, they cannot vocally express themselves.

Death is inevitable. It is one of the only certainties in life. Regardless, people are often uncomfortable discussing death. Nyatanga (2016) posits that the idea of no longer existing increases anxiety and emotional distress in relation to one’s mortality. Because of the difficulty in level of care for end-of-life patients, the patient and the family often need professional assistance for physical and emotional care. Many family caregivers are not professionally trained in medicine, and this is where hospice comes into play. Hospice aims to meet the holistic needs of both the patient and the patient’s family through treatment plans, education, and advocacy. There is a duality of care to the treatment provided by hospice staff in that they do not attempt to separate the patient’s care from the family’s care. Leming and Dickinson (2011) support that hospice, unlike other clinical fields, focuses on the patient and the family together instead of seeing the patient independent of the family. Many times in hospitals, the medical team focuses solely on the goal of returning the patient back to health in order for them to return to their normal lives. They do not take into account the psychological and spiritual components of the patient’s journey and the journey that the family must take as well. For treatment of the patient, Leming and Dickinson agree that hospice does not attempt to cure patients, and instead concentrates solely

This piece of work will be based on the pre-assessment process that patients go through on arrival to an endoscopy unit in which I was placed in during my second year studying Adult diploma Nursing. I will explore one patient’s holistic needs, identifying the priorities of care that the patient requires; I will then highlight a particular priority and give a rational behind this. During an admission I completed under the supervision of my mentor I was pre-assessing a 37 year old lady who had arrived to the unit for an upper gastrointestinal endoscopy. During the pre-assessment it was important that a holistic assessment is performed as every patient is an individual with unique care needs as the patient outline in this piece of work has

Caring for patients at the end of life is a challenging task that requires not only the consideration of the patient as a whole but also an understanding of the family, social, legal, economic, and institutional circumstances that surround patient care.

Assessment of a patient is a big process of decision making, it is about the collection of information which will contribute to an overall judgement of a person and the illness they may have. Lloyd (2010) states that assessment is one of the first steps which is needed to be done in the nursing process, it is a building block for a relationship and an ongoing process which lets health professionals gather the correct information to help them understand the problems and needs that the patient is going through. Most of the nursing assessment which are in use today will all have very similar aims. The difference is that how the assessment’s are carried out is where the differences come from.

The aim of this assignment is to explore the four stages of APIE, explaining their importance in nursing, as well as identifying possible problems within the stages, in relation to the videos of Joe. These issues will then be anaylsed using theory, to create possible explanations and consequences for the behaviour and actions shown by Joe and the nurses.

One of my key goals after graduation is to get into a nurse practitioner (NP) program, and eventually to practice successfully as an NP. The teamwork skills listed will likely be most applicable after school, and the writing skills would help me more generally as I take later classes for my bachelors and later graduate level courses.

With graduation fast approaching, there is much to consider when applying for positions as a nurse practitioner. Having worked for two different hospital networks and a specialty clinic, I have learned over the years what I want most in a job. Although it can be intimidating and awkward, it is imperative, I address the things I desire most during the interviewing process. The top four things are as follows

The main barrier upon arrival to United States was the communication. Which leads to difficulty in effectively achieving a job as well as participating within the foreign country. They were willing to undergo this difficulty with the hope that their children might improve economic status of the people through education. The nursing assessment begins by knowing ourselves and accepting our values and realizing all other cultural values that differ from our own. Realizing this will permit the provider to work effectively with patients and to provide a safe, professional nursing care. It is important for the provider to remember that some of them have no education so they will have difficulty speaking English. Providing aids to help them interpret

Since the inception of the Patient Self-Determination Act (PSDA) in 1990, Modan and Brill (2014) stated that modification has been made to reflect the true intention of clarifying and protecting the patient’s wishes for his end of life care. However, despite the improvement in advanced care planning (ACP), Modan and Brill (2014) reported that public participation remains low. Moreover, due to the fact that ACP requires communication strategies, Modan and Brill (2014) also commented that there is a disconnection between the patient and providers – when health care workers tend to focus more on protocols than the patient’s experiences. Thus, to effectively engage the patient in ACP conversations, a nurse must look into his

Lily was a 65 year old lady with stage 5 CKD, she had recently begun hemodialysis treatment three times a week as an inpatient and had been responding well to treatment. During dialysis treatment on the morning of the first day, Lily’s observations showed that she was: tachycardic, hypotensive, tachypnoeaic, had an oxygen saturation level of 88% and was becoming confused and drowsy. It became apparent that Lily had become hypovolaemic. The hypovolaemic shock seen in this patient was of a particular critical nature due to the fact that her dialysis treatment had moved her rapidly through the first two stages of shock with her compensatory mechanisms failing very quickly (Tait, 2012). It was also much harder to identify the early signs of

Advanced care planning and end of life discussion is a topic that will come up at some point in everyone’s lifetime. This discussion may not involve you directly, but most likely will need to be discussed with a loved one or good friend. As a hospice nurse, this is a topic that is very important to me; it is also something they don’t teach you about in nursing school. Advanced care planning contains information regarding specifics on end of life wishes such as cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR), artificial nutrition, and comfort care. It contains a legal document that only goes into effect if and or when a person becomes incapacitated (National Institute on Aging, 2016). Most people consider end of life planning “something you do when you

This is a great idea to assist the elderly when discharged from the hospital. As you mentioned the inability to carry out ADLs can have a significant impact on an individual's survival rate; therefore, early identification and intervention could certainly reduce negative outcomes. From a nursing informatics perspective, a screening tool could be created to identify those patients at risk before they are discharged from the hospital and if the patient scored low then perhaps they would "qualify" be enrolled in such a program. There are several "Activities of Daily Living" assessment tools (Lawton & Brody, 1969) which could be adapted to screen patients. According to Mastrian & McGonigle ( 2015), "patient safety is an important and ubiquitous

Residents of three skilled nursing facilities in the San Francisco Bay area were selected for the study. The study was completed at nursing facilities for two reasons, one, because with the passage of the PSDA hospitals and nursing homes were required on admission to inquire about advance directives in place for each patient and two, skilled nursing facility patients are admitted from hospitals and there are at least two opportunities, at the hospital admission and the nursing facility admission to inquire about advanced directives. (Van Leuven, 2010, p. 3128). During a six week period chart reviews and observations of admission interviews of the 272 residents, a full 44% entered the skilled nursing facility without an advanced directive and 11% remained without an advanced directive. This study concluded that the current law is ineffective and more conversation needs to take place about end-of-life decision

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.