Reducing Uncertainty In Nursing

Emotional Support and encouraging involvement of family and friends- Listening to patient with undivided attention .Providing clear, timely and meaningful information regarding the illness. Providing enough information regarding the patient’s illness. Respecting and acknowledging the family and friends’ support in patient care and providing supportive environment.

Carper’s way of knowing can be used as a framework to understand what we have learnt by reflecting on our experience. It is a process that helps analyze the depth of our experience to develop continued effectiveness in our daily practice. Carper(1978), states that all four of these ways of knowing (empirics, personal,esthetic and ethical) are present in all of our interactions but the proportion of their use varies based on what we are doing.

People generally like to stay in their comfort zone, they do not like changes. However, change is a necessary part of life, we see change in nature every day. Change can be positive or negative. We can choose to embrace the change or reject it, we also can choose to allow the change to have a negative or positive impact on our lives. Helmstetter lists six steps when dealing with change. First to recognize the change, then to decide if you are going to accept or reject the change. The next step is to choose your attitude toward the change, then choose how you are going to deal with it and what actions you are going to take. The last step is to evaluate your progress of accepting the change (Lamberton and Minor, 2012)

Communication is key to effective healthcare practices. According to American Journal Of Critical Care (2014), Patient-centered care starts with “effective communication, being empathetic and available, avoiding personal prejudges, and listening therapeutically are integral parts of patient-centered care” (Riley, White, Graham, Alexandrov, 2014, p. 320). This will improve communication; promote patient involvement in care, which creates a positive relationship with the healthcare provider and medical team. This results in improved adherence to treatment plan. Clinical practice guidelines need to be implemented for the patient and family members to be able to be involved in informed decision-making regarding healthcare needs. The fundamental core of nursing is to have a partnership with the patient and their family regarding the patient’s outcome.

The limitation listed caused for those children to be excluded from the study. Some children had verbal disabilities as well. The strengths were that the researchers had an audit trial and had independent auditing of the qualitative analysis. Credibility of the article was confirmed through, the design and research questions being consistent with the interpretive descriptive methodology. “The other nurse researcher conducted member checking with three participants by presenting and reviewing a summary of the findings to verify the accuracy of interpretation. Quantitative and qualitative findings were triangulated in this inquiry, optimizing representative credibility and enhancing substantive completeness” (Macartney & et al., 2014, P.392). The conclusions drawn by the researcher are the survivors experience multiple symptoms and have many way of coping with the symptoms. Their symptoms has a negative impact on their daily lives. This research contributes to nursing because through understanding the children symptoms and ways that brain tumors affect their lives we can provide additional support to the patient and families. This article gives us as nursing additional information to turn to when providing care for patients with brain tumors. Yes. There are grounds for further research on brain tumors.

Sometimes good intentions can prove to be a barrier. For instance, fear of what healthcare professionals will do with the information that is disclosed can keep a patient from being honest about their problems, thus the wrong treatment can be given, or no treatment given at all. This can be detrimental for the patient and the community. To give accurate care it is imperative that as much information concerning the crisis that is presenting be given and a detailed history. This could impact the healthcare team as well.

The application of theories into nursing practice has profound advantages for nurses as well as the profession as a whole. Many of today’s evidence-based practice and nursing concepts and fundamentals are stemmed from nursing theories that were developed by many nurse scholars and researchers. A wide range of nursing theories have been used throughout the history of the profession as the basis of professional nursing practice and it helps nurses perform superior care for their patients and better serve the community by incorporating evidence-based practice which has been tested and validated in studies. By acknowledging the importance of these frameworks and their use in clinical practice, nurses are given the opportunity to fine-tune their nursing judgment and decision-making skills. Furthermore, nurses are empowered to apply these theories into their daily practice as it helps them build new knowledge and ensures that their nursing interventions are supported by research. To demonstrate how nursing theories impact evidence-based practice, this paper will discuss two research articles in which Mishel’s uncertainty in illness theory has been used as the basis for the study. It will then be followed by a brief analysis of the utility of this framework within daily nursing practice as well as my personal thoughts regarding Mishel’s uncertainty theory. One research article by Almgren, Lennerling, Lundmark, and Forsberg (2017) utilized Mishel’s theory in a study to

Communication is an effective key in pediatric palliative care. The topic of a dying child is a very sensitive matter. Many times communication about managing the child’s pain and the necessary measurements needed to ease progressive pain are not discussed thoroughly among health care providers, parents, and even the child. The result is that parents and the sick child do not have the opportunity to express their concerns and feelings. This leads to unnecessary psychological and social distress for the child and the child’s family.

Shared or patient-centered decision-making, the process by which a health care provider communicates to the patient personalized information about options, outcomes, probabilities, and uncertainties of available options while the patient communicates any questions or concerns they have (Dy and Purnell, 2012). The provider needs to show trustworthiness towards their patient in order to make correct decisions together for the patient. To be trustworthy, it is influenced by the length of nature of provider-patient relationships, continuity of care, patient perceptions, and expectations, and satisfaction (Dy and Purnell, 2012). Competent decision-making by the providers requires patient-specific information and the health provider 's prior medical knowledge and clinical. It is vital for health

As established in the National Cancer Institute, “Cancer is the leading cause of death worldwide for children and adolescents in America, accounting for more than 91,250 children that lose their lives to this disease” (National Cancer Institute). Cancer is not considered a terminal illness, but more of a chronic illness because of the intense treatment that the individual has to endure. As a result of this treatment the chances of survival for children suffering from pediatric cancer has increased around 80 percent. The increment in the survival rate has made it possible for many parents to not have to go through the acceptance that they are about to lose their child to a terminal illness, but have coping strategies that will make them adapt to the fear of the reoccurrence of that illness. This illness has a great impact on the patient as well as the family because not only do they have to adapt to this illness physically, but also mentally. Research has shown that there are both short term and long term effects that come into effect when the child is both in treatment and also years after the treatment. The type of cancers that these adolescents have to endure range from leukemia, brain tumors and other cancerous tumors that have appeared in recent medical studies. These tumors can either be benignant, an acute case that is non-cancerous or malignant, a cancerous case that will need intense treatment over an extended period of time.While many would say there is more of a

Analyzing through Frank’s concept we can see that he is uncertain of the future his disease brings. To decrease and manage uncertainty there needs to be strong communication between the health care professional, patient and other family/friends who will be involved in the care. Research has demonstrated that through a communication model which involves the following– assessing knowledge of prognosis, figuring out the patients core values and concerns, creating a

I appreciate your thoughts and examples of the ways of knowing in nursing. I agree that Watson's Theory of Human Caring aligns nicely with personal knowing. Watson expounds that through transpersonal caring may be developed by identifying ourselves with others or by finding the patient’s dilemmas in ourselves. When transpersonal caring occurs, self-knowledge and wisdom are developed (Watson, 1999). Watson further discusses in her book, Post Modern Nursing and Beyond, this type connectedness keeps alive common humanity (Watson, 1999). In turn, this personal connection allows the nurse to have more insight and knowledge to provide individualized and holistic nursing care. Watson, J. (1999). Postmodern nursing and beyond. Santa Fe, NM: Harcourt

Anxiety refers to a combination of emotions that include fear, apprehension, and worry. Since anxiety entails an expectation of uncertain threat, it plays an obvious role in the experience of parents when confronted with the life-threatening diagnosis of cancer in their child. The feeling of uncertainty in parents is a manifestation of anxiety which stems from fear of possible disease consequences like relapse or death (Yeh, 2002). Three studies have shown a relationship between pediatric cancer and anxiety in parents as a result (Moore & Mosher, 1997; Yeh, 2002; Santacroce, 2002). These studies have similar findings in that it was found that frequency of anxiety occurs more often around the time of the diagnosis of cancer and tends to decrease

The diagnosis of cancer is never welcome, but may be even more difficult and unexpected when the disease affects children and adolescents. Every year, approximately 1 in 285 children in the US will be diagnosed with some type of cancer before the age 20 (American Cancer Society, 2014). Children and adolescents diagnosed with the disease face many stressors related to their diagnosis, including adverse side effects associated with medical treatments, social difficulties, frequent absences from school, uncertainty about the disease and its treatment, and fears about death (Rodriguez et al., 2012; Sorgen & Manne, 2002;). These sources of stress are frequently associated with clinically relevant

For digressing psychosocial issues in these facets of a patients’ life, the article suggests that it is best to utilize support groups as a way for the patient to identify and connect with others experiencing who are in a situation similar to theirs. Finally, by working on communication techniques and strategies to speak with their physician and family members could have an influence on the decision-making process between patient and physician, potentially alleviating stress and