Constant Patient Care - Essay Example

1. To improve the care of the patient constant care is necessary. What works and what do not work is best known by the nurses, who interact the mostwith the patients. Research plays a central role in best patient care and the bedside clinician can be an ideal scientist if she receives the necessary support. It has been scientifically proved that nurses can improve patients’ lives through research (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1999/12/991224090416.htm). Research improves the capability of the nurses to improve the patient care. Since nurses are the ones that directly deal with the patients their research addresses immediate patient concern. Doctors and nurses are the eyes and ears of the health-care system. Medicine has been referred to as an art based on science. The art of medicine has been based on strong foundation of practice. It has evolved through centuries based on human values and intuition. Medicine allays the fears and anxieties of the patients and attempts to console them under all circumstances (http://www.msmonographs.org/article.asp?issn=0973-1229;year=2006;volume=4;issue=1;spage=127;epage=138;aulast=Panda). According to me the quality of tending to the sick can be called an art, not the profession of medicine. One can have the art of being a nurse or a doctor but medicine by itself is not an art. If the nurses or the doctors do not have this art, they are considered inferior in their profession. They may have the scientific knowledge of what medicine to administer but they may not have the art of handling or consoling the patient. The medical activity is based on science and scientific methods. Medicine and technology by itself may not be able to work wonders for the patient and how the nurse handles the situation may be more important. Even then, it will be said that the nurses has the art of patient care. At the same time, unless the field of medicine has progressed and unless new scientific methods and equipments are available, the nurses will not be merely able to help the patient by having the art of healing. It can also happen that data available through different tests and diagnosis do not match with the clinical investigation of the doctors. In this case the art of healing or the art of medicine or the intuition of the doctors and nurses becomes important. Thus medicine is both an art and science. Since the nurses and doctors are well versed in the art of medicine or art of tending care, they are the best judges in how the suffering of the patients can be alleviated. Thus nurses are often engaged in the research process as their experience is first hand. They know what can bring relief to the patients and from a healer they become scientists. Several institutes support research by nurses as they have been found to be the most efficient bedside scientists. Their research has helped many patients whom these nurses have never ever met. Medicine can thus be said to be a combination of both art and science. They are like the two sides of a coin. It requires a combination of the art of healing and appropriate scientific knowledge. 2. Ecological imbalance is endangering human and the animal species on earth. For material gains, for profits, firms are engaging in activities that are against the norms of nature. While there are various factors that are responsible for the ecological imbalance, the most dramatic intrusion to our planets environment is deforestation. Researchers understand the impact of deforestation and fragmentation of the world’s largest and most biodiverse rainforest – the Amazon. The Amazon Basin is in Brazil and ten percent of the total carbon in terrestrial ecosystems throughout the world (http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mnwalsh/amazon.html). With the damage to the environment through different factors, the Amazon is gradually becoming a sink or a source of carbon dioxide that could leave a positive or negative feedback through out the globe. Climate changes, rising carbon dioxide levels and human factors have all influenced the flow of carbon dioxide between the terrestrial ecosystems of the Amazon Basin and the atmosphere. As carbon dioxide increases global temperatures keep rising. Amazon has a high rate of soil respiration and which is sensitive to small changes in temperature and hence releases additional carbon. Human factor has caused the most dramatic intrusion in the planet’s environment as they caused deforestation, forest degradation, and change in land use from forests to agriculture, slash and burn and shifting cultivation techniques, logging and much more. Deforestation accounts for much of carbon release in the atmosphere and contributes significant quantities of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. All the deforested area is burned in order to clear the land. Land use has changed from forest to agriculture. Secondary succession forests are burned in order to spur regrowth after each agricultural cycle. Deforestation has cause the diminishing of the deep root system of the Amazonian trees which has an impact on the climate. Water is extracted from the deep soil layers through out the dry season and this causes latent heat in the atmosphere. Many supermarkets are selling biofuel which is linked to deforestation and they also invest heavily in companies that import cheap tropical feedstock regardless of the environmental degradation (http://www.biofuelwatch.org.uk/greenergy%5B1%5D.doc). This biofuel is made from palm oil or soy. Oil palm plantation and soy have led to a large proportion of deforestation and NASA has confirmed that there is a correlation between the price of soy and the deforestation of Amazon. This could cause much of rainforest and agriculture around it to collapse. Due to the release of carbon global temperature could rise by about 1.5-3oC. This is turn means a threat to one third of all species on earth. Brazil’s ethanol program is causing huge deforestation in the Atlantic Forests and in the State of Alagoas only 3% forest cover remains. A 2005 NASA study has warned that Pantanal wetlands found in Brazil, Bolivia and Paraguay are under intense pressure from agriculture. Carbon released through land conversion could increase global warming. Besides, these have also given rise to slavery, child labour, and exploitation of labour, low wages, poor working conditions and people becoming landless. 3. Creating virtual worlds has been the desire of mankind which has been addressed by the world of art and imagination. It is now possible to interact with the world of imagination in a realistic way and entertainment has pervaded the privacy of people’s homes. It gives the feeling of being there and creates the feeling of doing. Traditionally the aim of the film was to enhance the film’s psychological impact and entertainment value by making the viewer feel part of the movie (ftp://ftp.cordis.europa.eu/pub/ist/docs/fet/fetpr-4.pdf). The passive viewer became an active participant. Today by creating virtual environments there is a distance between the current reality and the reality shown through display. The non-interactive media has become very immersive and realistic but the viewer has a passive role. Perception is not merely sensing the environment through the sense organs. Perception integrates multimodal sensory data, ongoing actions and intentions, and memory processes. An individual is able to control his behavior or action within an environment. Through computer generated environments the viewer is able to control certain aspects of the mediated environment. In this way the participant becomes aware that he or she is an actor within that environment and the feeling of doing will enhance the feeling of being there within the mediated environment. It is all controlled by computer-generated and remote-controlled manipulators. As far as a painting is concerned it may not support physical presence to any great extent but virtual reality technology has the potential to engender a high sense of physical presence. Nevertheless, today in virtual environments the user interaction modifies the behavior of the virtual actors. Virtual environments and virtual actors cannot provide the same level of satisfaction because human perception is so sensitive that it cannot be fooled. Virtual presence may be vivid, exciting and believable but it still cannot generate the same sense of viewing. One must understand the limitations of a virtual environment. There are certain things that are impossible to achieve virtually. Emotions cannot be duplicated. If it were as easy as that then we could possibly create Computer-generated human beings and bring them to life – but we can’t! What a person feels can only be the strongest when the object invoking the emotion is a real-life situation of physically tangible people. Computer-generated visuals or graphics cannot express the nuances of human behavior – the subtle facial expressions and the myriad reactions which only nature and real feelings can make possible. Hence, although a viewer might be fascinated (perhaps even be enamored) while watching a virtual entertainment extravaganza, when he comes out of it, he will dismiss it saying that “after all it was an animated story..” .. The lingering feeling one gets at the end of a heart-warming movie or the sweet sorrow a powerful author or novelist invokes in an individual is something that virtual entertainment can never replicate. Thus the entertainment value will certainly diminish and the industry will feel the pinch of it several years down the line. Read More