Nervous system - Research Paper Example

Nervous System: Describe how you will perform a neurological assessment. A patient with unilateral facial drooping should be neurologically assessed for all cranial nerves. The patient should be asked if she has any trouble smelling or tasting. She should also be asked to follow the finger of the examiner which is held out in front of her between her eyes. She should be asked to give a broad smile. She should be asked to widely open her mouth so that the examiner could check the movement of uvula.

She should be asked to protrude her tongue and then, it should be noted if the tongue deviates to left or right. Determine if upper or lower neuron disease is the cause of her complaint. The patient’s face in this case study is drooping on one side and face drop is more common with facial nerve paralysis. Facial nerve paralysis is in turn more common with Lower Motor Neuron (LMN) lesion than Upper Motor Neuron (UMN) lesion. Forehead muscles can be tests by asking the patient to raise her eyebrows in order to determine if UMN or LMN disease is the real cause behind face drop.

If the furrows of the forehead are asymmetrical, it is a LMN disease like Bell’s palsy. If otherwise, it is UMN disease like pseudobulbar palsy. The patient in the case study is most probably suffering from Bell’s palsy because that is more often the cause of “muscle weakness on one side of the face” (El-Bab, 2011, p. 2134). Will you assign her to a novice or a proficient nurse? Defend your decision. Assigning this patient to a novice or proficient nurse depends on physical condition of the patient.

If there are no extreme symptoms like blindness, seizures, or severe headache, if facial drooping started suddenly, and if there is no wrinkling on forehead, the patient has no stroke and is suffering from Bell’s palsy. In that case, treatment with steroids should immediately begin which can be handled by a novice nurse as well.Reference:El-Bab, M.F., Makhdoom, N., Al-Harbi, K.M., Baghdadi, H.H., & Alam, A. (2011). Facial Nerve Palsy Incidence, Clinical Feature, and Prognosis in Al-Madinah Al-Munawarah.

Journal of Basic and Applied Scientific Research, 1(11), 2131-2136.