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Traumatic brain injury occurs when a person is hit in the head with a blunt force. This significant force to the head can happen playing recreational sports, on the playground, being in a car or motorcycle accident, falling down at home and your head impacting something, a blast or explosion. Traumatic brain injuries are also the leading cause of fatality rate and disability, especially in children, young adults and elderly. TBI is a devastating condition that affects millions of people nationwide, because it can affect the nervous system permanently, it also messes with the neurological, musculoskeletal, cognitive and much more. TBI force a family to deal with not just the physical disability, with the behavioral and emotional roller

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a type of injury that is a critical public health and socio-economic problem. TBI is a leading cause of death and disability in both children and adults [5]. The Centers for Disease Control and

Attention for traumatic brain injury has grown over the years and programs have been created to help try and prevent the injuries. As this is an injury to the brain the literature is vast with insight into what part of the brain injured resulted in what change in the individual. Children and athletics have been the main focus in recent years for studies as research have shown that undiagnosed injuries can have long lasting effects.

Dorothy Gronwall, a concussion specialist wrote in Cumulative and Persisting Effects of Concussion on Attention and Cognition, “After MHI (mild head injury), patients have difficulty in all areas that require them to analyze more items of information than they can handle simultaneously. They present as slow because it takes longer for smaller than normal chunks of information to be processed. They present as distractible because they do not have the spare capacity to monitor irrelevant stimuli at the same time as they are attending to the relevant stimulus. They present as forgetful because while they are concentrating on point A, they do not have the processing space to think about point B simultaneously. They present as inattentive because when the amount of information that they are given exceeds their capacities, they cannot take it all in.” All of these symptoms are permanent effects that a person can have after having only mild head injury. It is clear that it is important to take care of the injuries the correct

Medical and technological advances have led to greater survival rates in individuals suffering from various illness and injury throughout history. This includes individuals who suffer traumatic and nontraumatic brain injuries. Approximately 1.5 million people in the United States sustain a brain injury each year with the survival rate of over 90 percent making brain injury the leading cause for disability in the United States. (Mysiw, Bogner, Corrigan, Fugate, Clinchot, & Kadyan 2006). Cognitive, physical, sensory and behavioral changes are widely noted in individuals in the months and years following a brain injury. However, the psychosocial, psychological and emotional effects of these injuries are less discussed and therefore these aspects can be overlooked when anticipating a course of treatment. Individuals who sustain acquired brain injuries experience significant, lasting impairment in the psychosocial, psychological and emotional aspects of their lives and better understanding of these issues can lead to better treatment and coping skills for these individuals.

Concussions or mild traumatic brain injuries (MTBI) are the most common forms of traumatic brain injury. There are between 1.6 and 3.8 million concussions a year that occur due to sports and recreation accidents alone (CDC). Mild concussions and MTBIs were once thought to be insignificant in terms of consequences. However, there now is significant evidence that neurological even with what is thought to be a mild injury, physiological, and cognitive changes can occur. Individuals sustaining mild brain injuries often report an assortment of physical, cognitive, and emotional/behavioral symptoms referred to as post concussion syndrome (PCS). There are many symptoms associated with PCS, but these symptoms are often mistaken as behavior, mood, and/or adjustment disorders.

Traumatic brain injury is any damage caused to the brain. Individuals with TBI may show aphasia-like symptoms, yet the characteristics of TBI include mostly cognitive processes deficits. Those characteristics include disrupt orientation, attention, memory, visual processing, and executive functions problems. Penitents with TBI experience a blackout that can last anywhere between a few minutes up to months and usually wake up confused and disoriented. They do not have any recollection of the events that occurred. In addition to the common characteristics mentioned earlier, TBI patients exhibit communication deficits that relate to poor cognitive functioning such as problems with word finding, grammatical, spelling, reading, and writing. The cause of TBI is very straightforward, unlike SLI or ASD. Any injury to the head, for example motor vehicle accidents, falls, blast trauma, and more, can cause a TBI. These in turn can cause damage to multiple areas of the brain and impair motor, speech, language, and cognitive functions as discussed. It is important to note that unlike ASD that usually

Many people assume that concussions only affect a person’s cognitive abilities for a couple of weeks. However, a new study proves that the effects of a concussion can last as long as 55 years. The researchers studied the results of two groups: one group of 43 people ages ranging from 18-80 years old, and another group of 20 college students whose average age was 21. Each group contained people who have suffered a concussion and people whom have not experienced a concussion. The study showed that regardless of a person’s age or how long it had been since their last concussion, that people whom have ever suffered a concussion did worse on a test of virtual working memory.

When an injury is sustained by the human body, such as a concussion that affects the limbic system, can results in temporary amnesia. However, when the damage to the brain is significant enough, the limbic system found in the forebrain cannot recover. Since the forebrain is injured significantly, the acetylcholine production is decreased; therefore, motor memory, long term memory, and short term memory are affected negatively.

Post-Concussion Syndrome (PCS) is considered a neurological disorder, which produce long-term concussive effects. PCS is a form of traumatic brain injury (TBI) and can be the result of one or multiple concussions (McKee et al. 2009). A concussion is characterized as a mild TBI (mTBI) (Stern et al. 2013). The term “mild” refers to the severity of the original physical trauma, and does not indicate the severity of symptoms following the injury. The American Academy of Neurology (1997) defines concussion as any alteration of mental status due to a biomechanical force affecting the brain with or without loss of consciousness. If concussive symptoms persist longer than 3 months, a patient is diagnosed with PCS (Gavett et al. 2011a;

According to the International Brain Injury Association, traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a leading source of childhood injury. In the United States of America, 473, 947 children between the ages of 0-14 years visited the emergency department for a traumatic brain injury. When diagnosed with a traumatic brain injury, an individual can be classified in two different ways. The first classification is mild, and numerous traumatic brain injuries are classified as so. Although this level of injury isn’t the most severe, it is still associated with ongoing problems. Following mild, the next classification of traumatic brain injury falls under moderate-severe. Despite many traumatic brain injuries being classified as mild, a significant number of children

The disabilities that result from moderate to severe TBI differ depending on the area of injury, but they may include difficulties in speech, coordination, bilateral function, memory, complex thinking, and other areas (Murrey, 2006). Emotional and social areas are also affected by TBI due to changes in familial roles, lowered self-esteem, and hopelessness brought on by the injury (Murrey, 2006). Because of this, suicide rates in these patients are remarkably high, with 33% of patients at risk (León-Carriòn et al., 2005). Recovery in TBI patients may occur spontaneously throughout the two years following the trauma (León-Carrión et al., 2005). Beyond this point, remaining disabilities are usually permanent (León-Carrión et al., 2005).

Traumatic Brain Injury is otherwise known as TBI. “Traumatic brain injury, a form of acquired brain injury, occurs when sudden trauma causes damage to the brain. TBI can result when the head suddenly and violently hits an object, or when an object pierces the skull and enters brain tissue” (NINDS, 2010). There are two main types of TBI, closed head injuries such as head hitting a windshield and penetrating head injuries such as a gunshot wound. As reported by the Global Neuroscience Initiative Foundation,” The severity of traumatic brain injuries is often assessed using the Glasgow Coma Scale, with scores ranging from 3 to 15. The higher the score,

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) (2016) in 2010 2.5 million people suffered traumatic brain injury (TBI). Kim (2011) highlights that, “TBI’s are the leading cause of death and disability in the world”, which disproportionally affect young individuals (p. 1518). Thus, it becomes increasingly important that nurses on a Med-Surg/Neuro floor understand factors that influence outcomes with this patient population, due to the high disability rate and young patient population. While my unit has extensive information regarding stroke care there is little guidance or education on TBI’s. Therefore, this article will aim to fill this gap and my own lack of knowledge. The Journal of Clinical Nursing has deemed this article credible by peer review.

According to the reading this week by Thompson and Mauk, “traumatic brain injury is the leading cause of disability worldwide” (2011, p. 1). The American Associations Neuroscience Nurses created a set of guidelines based on evidence based practice to care for patients with traumatic brain injury. The guidelines were designed to assist the nurse with providing effective quality of care and for the patient with the traumatic brain injury to have the best possible outcome with their condition. For example, Nurses are the key asset to the community with providing the population with education on measures to prevent mild traumatic brain injury on adults and children. The nurse can educate the adult on “avoiding distractions while driving in their vehicle, obey the traffic laws, avoid speeding, and avoid being under the