You Will Be Taking Care of a Patient in a Nursing

question 12

Essay

You will be taking care of a patient in a nursing home for the first time. Your assignment is to care for an older man who has heart disease. In addition, he has five other medical problems and takes 20 medications. While developing a plan of care for this patient, you can identify 8 to 10 nursing problems. You have no previous experience with nursing homes, and most of what you have heard and read about them is negative. Will you find yourself dreading the clinical day and expecting a negative experience before you even begin?

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Definitions:

Delusions

Fixed false beliefs that are resistant to reason or confrontation with actual fact, often found in psychotic disorders.

Schizophrenia

A persistent mental illness that disrupts the connection among thinking, feeling, and acting, causing incorrect perceptions, actions, and emotions, isolation from the actual world and personal ties in favor of fantasy and delusion, and an experience of mental disunity.

Enlarged Ventricles

A condition where the brain's ventricles are larger than normal, often associated with certain psychiatric and neurological disorders.

Prefrontal Areas

Regions of the frontal lobes of the brain implicated in a variety of complex behaviors, including planning, decision-making, and moderating social behaviour.