Detroit: Gale, 2009. 580-583. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 29 Nov. 2011.
Skills in how to communicate effectively with both the pediatric patient and their parents are important for a nurse to foster to maintain good therapeutic relationships. Person centred care becomes family centred care when babies and children are the patients. The dependent nature of the patient increases the need for parental responsibility and advocacy for the child. It is important for all members of the family to be taken into account when nursing a pediatric patient, especially the primary caregivers and siblings. Chochinov, 2007 (cited in Cornwell & Goodrich, 2009), states simply that compassion is ‘a deep awareness of the suffering of another coupled with the wish to relieve it.’ Pediatric patients and their families are highly sensitive to the compassionate nature of health care professionals and a successful therapeutic relationship with them depends on the sensitive, compassionate care offered by the nurse.
Efforts should be made to contact the clients next of kin or family to gain a better understanding of the client’s requirements . We should then record all information we have been given in their care plans. The needs and preferences of a client with dementia can change, and in some situations it can be very difficult to support an individual with dementia to eat or drink. In situations where a patient is unwilling to eat or drink for any length of time, a record of intake and output should be kept and a GP, a dietician and the client’s family should be contacted. It is important that we are able to recognise the different cultural requirements for our clients may present so we have to consider how we can meet these requirements needed.
How their sight, hearing and speech is, are they able to communicate? If they have a disability then they may require moving and handling so any equipment will have to be risk assessed as will the environment that the carer will be working in. Do they have a history of falls, do they have any allergies or specific dietary needs. Talk to family and carers as they will notice changes first. They will notice changes in health, mobility, failure to take medication etc.
It can mean that tasks such as making a cup of tea, or a sandwich can no longer be completed. Mobility is often affected in advanced dementia, which may mean individuals, can no longer physically, hold or lift items needed to eat and drink. People can often become withdrawn and depressed within dementia, and often this causes issues around eating, as emotional mood can greatly affect appetite. It can sometimes mean that people do not want to eat, have no will to and lack the function to have, or prepare a meal. However, Dementia can have the opposite effect.
Secondly, functional changes that may occur with someone with dementia is that they may have had a stroke or have weakness in using limbs which would affect them using utensils such as a knife and fork for instance not having the strength to lift the fork to their mouth. Or they may have lost strength within the swallowing or chewing, this would significantly affect a person in reference to eating drinking and nutrition. This can lead to a person not being able to eat and therefore losing weight and possibly malnourished and becoming dehydrated. Thirdly, emotional changes can affect eating, drinking and nutrition in a huge way. For instance people with dementia can be affected by grief as in the most common of circumstances they are elderly and may have suffered the loss of a partner.
It is important for the nurse to be familiar with end-of-life care options and opportunities in order to educate the patient and support them with whatever decision they choose. Many elderly patients wish to receive their end-of-life care in their own homes. Palliative care and hospice programs were created in order to help the elderly patients achieve their desires; however, there are numerous limitations that can make end-of-life care at home difficult to achieve. It is believed that end-of-life care at home isn’t as evident as individuals thought it would be due to the fact there are difficulties with having the appropriate technology needed to provide care and the inability of the medical staff to appropriately deal with and educate families (Silva, Poles, & Baliza, 2013). As stated in the research, “it appears that this is a stressful experience for professionals, mainly due to their inability to deal with the families and the lack of availability of technological resources” (Silva, Poles, & Baliza, 2013).
4223-002 Introduction to communication in health, social care or children’s and young people’s settings. Understand why communication is important in the work setting. 1.1 There are many different reasons why people communicate in the work place, for example to pass on information. Passing on up to date information about a patient is essential for good quality care. If a patient arrived who had different food requirements such as a different textured diet or religious/ cultural beliefs this type of information would need to be passed on.
Too much fat in a person’s diet can also cause disease when over consumed. Too many carbohydrates can lead to obesity and an increase in calories. Just as much as too many macronutrients is not good for a person too little has its effects too. If a person continually eats too little protein he or she can become susceptible to disease, it can cause a person to develop anemia, dry skin can develop and in women their bones can become brittle. If a person does not have enough carbs in his or her diet, he or she lacks needed calories that is also known as malnutrition.
It’s important to observe mental status changes and functional status changes, this can determine how well the patient can take care of themselves and deal with their health promotion on their own. Altered cognition is not a normal part of aging and the nurse may need to pay close attention to the possibilities of the onset of dementia. Activities of daily living include everything we do during our normal day to properly take care of ourselves and as we get older these tasks may become more difficult. Nurses need to assess how well a patient can see or hear, vision and hearing loss can be quite debilitating to performing ADL’s and it’s the nurses job to make sure our patient is in a safe environment and that they have proper vision/hearing care with proper strength prescriptions for their glasses or hearing assessments. It is very important to remember that hearing and vision loss is normal with aging and that when we perform our assessments we should talk slowly and annunciate clearly so the patient can understand any direction or education that is given (GCU, 2012).