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Nursing Issues Within The Paediatric Environment Within Nsw

Decent Essays

Early recognition of deteriorating patients in the clinical setting has been connected with increasingly successful interventions and effectively improved health outcomes (Parham, 2012). The worsening physiology of a clinically deteriorating patient is strongly tied to an increase in hospital mortality (Mitchell et al., 2010), and thus the importance of identifying the patient decline is of paramount to effective nursing care. This essay will investigate this current nursing issue in the paediatric environment within NSW in an Australian context. It will examine the impact clinical deterioration identification and management has on the nursing profession, the paediatric patients and their families, primarily through the exploration of the ‘Between the flags’ program and DETECT junior. Further discussion regarding the legal and ethical principles surrounding clinical deterioration will follow together with an evaluation of best nursing practice as supported by the literature. Clinical deterioration is a state usually revealed as derangements in vital signs and characterised as being significant disturbances in physiology for over 24 hours (Mitchell et al., 2010). Often, deterioration in a paediatric patient is more difficult In comparison to an adult to identify as a result of children’s compensatory mechanisms, which may disguise indicators of clinical deterioration (O’Leary, Nash & Lewis, 2015). Also unlike adults, most arrests in children are a result of serious

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