Child Abuse Case

In this case study a 15 month old girl with a diagnosis of failure to thrive is admitted to the pediatric unit and you’re her nurse. This patient was admitted 6 weeks ago with the same diagnosis. The mother appears to care for the child even though she is young and immature. The patient is very interactive with staff, smiling and laughing and she eats well during her stay. However, the patient draws away from the boyfriend when he visits. The nurse then receives a call for the patient's biological father who lives hundreds of miles away. The father has asked that the patient remain hospitalized for 4 additional days until he arrives. He reports he believes his daughter and her 4 year old sibling from a previous relationship are being
You have strong feelings that the pediatric patient you are caring for is being mistreated. However, you have no concrete evidence to prove child abuse and you are asked to discharge the patient back to her mother and her mother's boyfriend, which you do. Then you voice your concerns to your supervisor who suggests you do nothing else. What should you do? Let's take a look at some statistics regarding child abuse. According to the National Children's Alliance (2015), "more than 700,000 children are abused in the U. S. annually, CPS protects nearly 3 million children and the youngest children are the most vulnerable to
First, the nurse can request a meeting with the ethical committee or a multidisciplinary child abuse team if the organizations has one to discuss the need for keeping the patient hospitalized in order to protect the child until other evaluations regarding the safety of the patient and her home are completed and additional testing is performed even if insurance doesn't cover the hospitalization. Every suspected child abuse case should receive a "trauma survey", which is a full body skeletal survey to detect factures and their stages of healing. This survey can turn a suspected child abuse case into a definite case depending on the results of the exam. Additional laboratory tests including coagulation studies, CBC, electrolytes, and abdominal labs should be performed to determine any underlining medical reason for the patient's malnutrition, bruising if found or any question of trauma (Lazoritz,