Assessment of Community Health Needs - Case Study Example

1 Introduction This essay presents a Health Plan which consists of a health activity or event aimed at helping young Aboriginal pregnant women living in the Northern Territory of Australia to promote their health and encourage individual ownership for the continuity of their health care. Their community needs are assessed and appropriate health activity is highlighted, which is Antenatal Exercise. Assessment of Community Health Needs Young Aboriginal pregnant women in the Northern Territory of Australia experience some problems during their antenatal periods. Some of these problems are neglected because of limited assessment procedures to discover the actual community health needs for people in this demographic. Hence, the assessment approaches described below would be helpful in detecting the areas of antenatal requirements the Aboriginal pregnant women need: (a) Investigating the kinds of antenatal services available in the community. (b) Identifying the frequency of physical and mental health activities that would help pregnant women become strong enough for delivery. (c) Investigating how often the pregnant Aboriginal women personally carry out the activities to be in control of their health before delivering their babes. (d) Investigating the level of support they receive from their community health professionals and the Northern Territory Health Care Unit. 2 As a result of the assessment above, it is possible to detect that: (i) there are fewer health activities/events for young pregnant Aboriginal women in Northern Territory of Australia than envisaged; (ii) inadequate antenatal health events have caused the young pregnant women suffer painful labour before childbirth (Department of Health and Families, 2010). In order to prepare young pregnant Aboriginal women for easy and relaxed childbirth, a health plan for a dynamic health event must be incorporated into the health care services in the Northern Territory of Australia. Antenatal Exercise Antenatal Exercise is a vital health activity most pregnant women should be advised to undertake. The previous assessment revealed that the young Aboriginal pregnant women lack enough exercises during pregnancy. This situation sometimes makes their delivery to be quite a painful experience. Antenatal exercise has been described by nursing experts as a useful tool in helping a pregnant ready for the rigour of childbirth, both psychologically and physically (Brayshaw, 2003). Advantages of Antenatal Exercise There are several merits of carrying out Antenatal exercise for a pregnant woman. Some of these advantages are sometimes overlooked by either the pregnant women themselves or the health professionals in charge of them. 3 (i) Backache: Antenatal exercise is very helpful for reducing or totally removing back pain. Intense back pain during childbirth may increase the painful feelings usually accompanied the process. However, whenever there is not adequate health activity to encourage pregnant women to exercise, they are mainly affected by serious backache (Rankin, 2002). (ii) Posture/Appearance: Antenatal exercise helps pregnant women to maintain good posture and appearance. Instead of looking bent-over, they could stand up in an upright position, with a straight back. This posture also affects the baby position in the womb (Rankin, 2002). (iii) Psychological Sharpness: Pregnant women who exercise regularly possess sound bodies as well as keen psychological mental health (Rankin, 2002). This helps them to be strong-hearted and fearless as they approach their delivery date. (iv) Blood Circulation: Antenatal exercise helps pregnant women enjoy good health as blood can freely circulate through their bodies. This prevents the dangerous situation of blood clots in the pregnant women’s bodies, which may result in more serious health problems. (v) Relaxation: Antenatal exercise helps pregnant women relax by removing fatigue from their joints, tissues and other parts of their bodies. It also facilitates the circulation of oxygen in the pregnant women’s bodies through series of aerobic activities (Rankin, 2002). 4 Action Plan The Action Plan for this health activity—Antenatal exercise—is divided into four sections: (i) Time of delivery; (ii) Frequency of exercise; (iii) Precautions about Antenatal exercise; (iv) Evaluation and outcomes. (i) Time of delivery: This explains how long each Antenatal exercise should be: on average, each round of Antenatal exercise should be between 10-20 minutes. Stretching of joints should not take more than 10 minutes. Breathing in and out (aerobic activities) should not take more than 5 minutes. And walking around the park or home should not take more than 5 minutes. The time of delivery may be different from one pregnant woman to the other, depending on the state of each woman’s health. (ii) Frequency of exercise: The exercise should be carried out daily. If possible, the same exercise could be repeated 3 to 4 times a day. The purpose of doing is to let the pregnant woman’s body get used to the stretching of muscles and joints and other exercises. The aerobic activities like swimming, running and walking fast should not be undertaken daily—this could be done like twice or three times a week. Whenever there is too much pain in the joints or muscles, the exercise should be slowed down so as not to cause more pain on the pregnant woman’s body. Sometimes it is necessary to seek medical advice before making the final decision about the frequency of exercise. 5 (iii) Precautions about Antenatal exercise: An integral part of this action plan is the list of precautions a pregnant woman must pay serious attention to when undertaking Antenatal exercise. Too much exercise could do more harm than good if not properly regulated (Pillitteri, 2009). Hence, it is necessary that pregnant women doing Antenatal exercise should refrain from excessive jumping or bouncing that could led premature labour (Pilliterri, 2009). It is also important that the exercise should be kept fairly constant so as to avoid a situation whereby the body may reject such exercise after a seemingly long break. The pregnant woman’s back must be straightened and her posture should be relaxing in a way that her pelvis would be tilted. The frequency of the exercise should be decreased as the pregnancy progresses. It is necessary that the pregnant woman should seek the advice of medical professionals in order to determine which exercise is appropriate and which is not. It is helpful if the pregnant woman has been doing a certain exercise before getting pregnant; in this way, she can continue to that exercise, with the exception of exercises that could stress the muscles around her womb (Rankin, 2002). Pregnant women should avoid exercises that require that they maintain a particular balance—normally; there is a shift in the balance of pregnant women as soon as their weight increases and the structures of their bodies changed. To maintain a comfortable liquid balance, pregnant women are often advised to drink enough fluid (water, tea, etc) during and after the exercise (Rankin, 2002). 6 However, the common mistakes most pregnant women make when exercising is that they sometimes hold their breath due to tiredness in the course of their exercise—this practice is harmful since it prevents enough oxygen from circulating in the body during aerobic exercise (Pillitteri, 2009). This could also retard blood circulation in the body of the pregnant women. They should breathe throughout the exercise period. It is important to emphasize that the pregnant woman’s position is very significant; she should not engage in sit-ups go beyond 45 degree; she should let her feet come over her hips like someone riding a bicycle. All these precautions would help the pregnant woman to avoid the dangerous situation whereby abdominal trauma may occur. (iv) Evaluation and outcomes: The success of this Antenatal exercise depends on the process of evaluation designed to investigate the workability of the exercise. It is important that the doctors attending to the Aboriginal pregnant women should ask them about their exercise practice and indicate such information in their medical record. There could be community-based periodical inspection by nursing professionals on the pregnant women as they exercise their bodies at homes or at a designated public place. This would be helpful in understanding how much impact such exercise is having on their entire bodies. Some of the outcomes of Antenatal exercise is to prepare the pregnant women for easy and relaxed childbirth, having taken care of the excruciating pain associated with 7 labour; Antenatal exercise can also help the pregnant women relax the muscles around their wombs (Rankin, 2002). Generally, the exercise gives pregnant women the needed strong physique before they actually go to the Labour Room to deliver their babies. Continuity of Care The Antenatal exercise comprises of simple body-stretching exercises: in other words, they are cheap and simple exercises any pregnant young Aboriginal women can do. The Antenatal exercise proposed in this essay does not require any expertise before it could be carried out. Therefore, every Aboriginal pregnant woman can make the exercise their own, and continue to do it to strengthen their bodies before giving birth to their children. However, due to personal laziness or disinterestedness, some pregnant women may abandon the exercise to their own detriment—most especially, first-time mothers are likely going to experience some serious labour pain if they did not do enough exercise before their delivery (Brayshaw, 2003). In this case, the Maternity Centres could appoint nurses that would constantly encourage the pregnant women to undertake exercise at homes or at the Maternity Centres. Hence, this will encourage continuity of this kind of exercise. The Northern Territory Government could make this Antenatal exercise a compulsory activity for the young Aboriginal pregnant women and monitor their activities, at least, once a week. 8 Conclusion Antenatal exercise has been instrumental to helping pregnant women all over the world to maintain good health and psychological sharpness as they prepare to deliver their babies. This kind of health activity will be quite good for young Aboriginal women because they are not expensive, difficult or require elaborate preparation or qualification. It is a programme the Government of Northern Territory of Australia can easily implement with minimal financial budget. However, its usefulness is beyond expectation on most occasions. Good exercise helps people to stay healthy by overcoming small health problems that could up into a life-threatening one. 9 References Brayshaw, Eileen. 2003. Exercises in pregnancy and childbirth: a practical guide for educators. 2nd edn. Oxford: Elsevier Health Sciences. Department of Health and Families. 2010. Antenatal and postnatal care. [Online]. (30 June 2010). Available at http://remotehealthatlas.nt.gov.au/antenatal_&_postnatal_care.pdf [Accessed 30 June 2010]. Pillitteri, Adele. 2009. Maternal and child health nursing: care of the childbearing and childbearing family. 6th edn. New York: Lippincolt Williams & Wilkins. Rankin, Jean. 2002. Effects of antenatal exercise on psychological well-being, pregnancy, and birth outcome. London: Whurr Publishers Ltd. Read More