Older Adult Nursing - Essay Example

Running Head: OLDER ADULT NURSING Older Adult Nursing Name Institution Date Older Adult Nursing Introduction There are many physiological changes related with changes that take place during aging. The way a sickness presents itself in the body of an elderly is not the way it does in a young body and also the way the human body responds to treatment changes with age. Due to the complications with the old adults, they require personal attention. The clinician should consistently employ the care being provided to the elderly in order to offer the safest and the utmost quality care possible. The nurses ought to be fully skilled, have the tools and resources for them to tackle the duty of caring for the older adults. Nurses usually attend to the physical, cultural, psycho social as well as family apprehensions of the elderly to emphasize a successful aging. (Lacko, 2008). The coordination of nursing the elderly should be excellent to ensure the care given is of good quality. The nurse should ensure that the patient is independent depending on the patient’s condition. The care giver should aim at minimizing the patient’s impairment to enable the patient to do the normal activities unaided. The nurse ought to give the patient to make some decisions by themselves. Maintaining interdependence is a very important outcome for older adult care. The nurse should also keep the patient clean and comfortable. The patient should have appropriate toilet arrangements, hygienic clothes, fundamental hygiene and drinking and eating usually as per the health. The environment for the elderly should also be kept clean. The patient should also be safe for any accessibility to emergency and protection from any harm. The caring nurse should make the patient feel valued and if possible ensure the elderly contributes to the community. Moreover, the nurse ought to aim at giving the patient a healthy and long life (Lacko, 2008). The family’s goals include getting their elderly adult relieved of the health problems and getting information or guidance about the elderly. The family may also aim at getting relieved of some burden which they might be too busy to handle. The family also aims at getting their elderly person taken care of, complications that come with old age being treated and seeing their patient aging gracefully. Moreover, they might want their elderly to participate in normal activities. The patient too may want to lead a normal life and participate in the community’s or normal activities. The people living with the elderly usually face hard task of taking care of their elderly ones. This is especially if they are busy with their jobs or other things. Still, the relatives lacked the necessary skills to deal with the malfunctioning and complications that get the elderly. The family and the relatives of such patients, the elderly in most cases usually have a very difficult task in assisting their elderly parents make the correct choices. The main objective of the family was getting their elderly person get health care facilities to assist him in maintaining perfect health and have his health complications tackled by a professional. This thus enabled the elderly to live a comfortable life at his homes (Capezuti, 2007). Another goal of the family was to make sure that the elderly adhered to the therapeutic plans, followed the medical processes and also participated in precautionary health maintenance activities. The family also helped the elderly to get specialized practiced nursing care which emphasized the societal and personal requirements of the elderly person. This helped the elderly a lot since he needed some help with the every day activities and health care. The dire need of the patient to age with dignity was also met. The family assisted a lot in providing the care for the elderly. The family provided the money for the patient and helped the elderly in meeting his social needs by visiting and taking him out for trips. The main health concern that the elderly faced was impaired mobility. The patient had lost the capacity to walk, climb stairs and thus had a possibility of becoming completely disabled. The therapy that is I designed for my patient was intended to improve the patient’s mobility. The clinical treatment aimed at diagnosing and treating definite impairments that the patient had. These impairments included reduced body vigor and poor balance. The patient’s mobility improved best when his progress was measured with precise goals related to vigor, aerobic, ability and even other physical qualities. The focus was on regenerating the leg strength and balance. Limb velocity and foundation strength were the main factors that I concentrated in improving the mobility of my patient. Because the life expectancy of is really rising, I really looked into the patient’s health and ensured that he was taken good care of. Changes involved with ordinary aging were distinguished with the changes that come with diseases. Adjustments in the structure and function of multiple body coordination had affected the elder’s appearance, movements and also the ability to fight infections. medications of the elderly were managed to as to reduce using the medicines so much since the elderly people eventually gets a lot of medications incase pitiable care is taken. Numerous medications may finally cause an array of drug interactions in the elderly. Incase the elderly are provided with unnecessary medications, the primary drug reaction might transpire when a certain drug arouses a side effect. Consequently, a secondary drug reaction comes by when some medication reacts with another (Lacko, 2008). This comes about because of polypharmacy. The old person I was taking care of was treated with the ways that were beneficial and were not harmful at all. The principle evaluation involved data concerning biomedical, practical, psychological and social concerns that helped in planning and implementation of the person’s health care. Pressure Injuries The pressure injury present in the patient was an ulcer that was due to constant pressure that resulted from occlusion of the blood flow, cell death or maybe due to tissue ischemia. These pressure ulcers could have resulted from chronic or acute complications. For the provision of the required medical care for the ulcers, the patient was approached within a holistic border work. The frame work involved integration of quality assessment, interventions that had been researched thoroughly and also procedural intercession of the patience outcomes. The older individuals have got aged skin and their skin wrinkles, the skin becomes thin and blood vessels retreat. These changes related with ageing may cause ulcerations on the skin (Zwicker, 2007). The coetaneous window of the patient was used in planning and implementation of personalized and all-inclusive care. Using a holistic evaluation and valuation, a plan that cared for the patient’s pressure injury was built. During the ulcer management, the main focus was put in healing the wound. Cautious positioning padding was done regularly to minimize the danger of pressure ulceration. The patient was turned regularly in order to avoid the ulcer from worsening. Moreover, the patient was physiologically comfortable enough to provide the necessary substrate; lesion hygiene, moist and infection free and finally the source of the injury was removed. Because the elderly take long for their wounds to heal, maximum care ought to be taken. Respiratory Issues Age related changes were present in the patient’s respiratory system. Muscle vigor had diminished within the diaphragm and thorax, the chest wall was stiff and there was reduced elasticity in the alveoli, thus the surface area had decreased and consequently a gas exchange capacity had diminished. The mucous membrane was drier and hence there was a problem in mucous excretion. Tests were executed using x-ray together with physical examination. The diseases that were identified were asthma, tuberculosis and pneumonia. The correct medications were administered to the elderly. Because these diseases have a likelihood of affecting the lungs through air pollution a plan treatment was drawn which included working with additional specialists like heart professionals (Cotter, 2001). Diabetes Mellitus The patient had a metabolic disorder which is diabetes mellitus type one. The cause was due to deficiency of insulin construction by the beta cells. The treatment objective was to treat the symptoms and making sure that the blood glucose was normal. Still, care was taken to avoid inducing hypoglycemia and this was aimed at reducing long term impediments. Nutrition and exercise were stressed to the patient and this was very important. Complications that could lead to diseases like hypertension, loss of vision and myocardial infarction were observed (Cotter, 2005). Dizziness For old people, changes in the configuration and nervous system functioning, basically occurs. Such changes can lead to some permanent changes in mobility, sensation, coordination and even the behavior might change. The concerned patient was experiencing dizziness and therefore this indicated a slowing neurological reply as less neurons are present to supply sensory and motor messages. Thus the patient ended up experiencing disequilibrium (Cotter, 2005). Fall Prevention Measures The patient being old requires some basic safety precautions to minimize the falls since the old are susceptible to falls. The patient’s environment ought to be evaluated to check for extrinsic menace and after that, suitable corrective actions should be installed. The environment should then be reevaluated if it is safe enough for the elderly and then the patient is assessed for any multifactorial risk factor (Resnick, 2007). The risk findings should then be communicated to the patient and the family and precise interventions identified to reduce the patient’s risk. After that, early mobility ought to be promoted to the patient like daily walking. The family, the patient and the nurse should explore the possibilities of maintaining the patient’s mobility and purposeful status (Rubenstein & Josephson, 2006). Conclusion The nurses caring for the patients should be skilled enough because if the nurses have the knowledge of the best practices in moderation use, the injuries and complications can be minimized (Capezuti, 2007). When nurses are knowledgeable to recognize problems in the older adults early, treatment is more efficient, and outcomes pick up. There is confirmation that elderly patients cared by the nurses have less rehospitalization (ECRI Institute, 2006). References Capezuti, E., (2007). Side-rail use and bed-related fall outcomes among nursing-home residents. Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, 50(1), 90–96. Evidence Level III: Quasi- experimental Study. Cotter, V., (2005). Advanced Practice Nursing with Older Adults: Clinical Guidelines. Chicago: McGraw-Hill Medical. ECRI Institute (2006). Falls Prevention Strategies in Healthcare Settings Guide. Plymouth Meeting, PA: ECRI Publishers. Evidence Level VI: Expert Opinion. Gray-Miceli, D., Strumpf, N. E., Johnson, J. C., Dragascu, M., & Ratcliffe, S. (2006). Psychometric properties of the post-fall index. Clinical Nursing Research, 15(3), 157– 176. Evidence Level III: Quasi-experimental Study. Kogan, A. B. (2008). Health: Man in a Changing Environment. California: Harcourt College Pub. Lacko LA, et al. The role of the advanced practice nurse in facilitating a clinical research study. Screening for delirium. Clin Nurse Spec 2008; 14(3):110–5. Rubenstein, L. Z., & Josephson, K. R. (2006). Falls and their prevention in the elderly: What does the evidence show? Medical Clinics of North American, 90 (5), 807–824. Evidence Level I: Systematic Integrative. Zwicker, D., (Managing Ed.), Geriatric Nursing Protocols for Best Practice (2nd Ed., pp. 141–164). New York: Springer Publishing Company, Inc. Evidence Level VI: Expert Opinion. Read More