The aspect of nursing chosen for the purpose of this assignment is nursing assessment and the impact it has on deciding what care is needed for the patient. It will also look at how the use of (Carper’s 1978) fundamental ways of knowing theory enabled the author to assist in carrying out a successful assessment with her mentor
In accordance with the Nursing and Midwifery Councils (NMC) code of conduct (2008) confidentiality will be maintained throughout this assignment. So for the purpose of this essay and to protect the anonymity of both the patient and the Community Psychiatric Nurse all names will be changed. Therefore, the patient shall be referred to as Iris and the CPN as Lisa. As (Richards and Edwards 2008 p13) explain the nurse is duty bound by law not to disclose information and therefore break confidentiality. In order to complete this essay permission of the Community Psychiatric Nurse was asked and full informed consent was given for the use of the assessment which I assisted in of her patient.
Iris was initially seen at a local memory clinic, and primarily diagnosed with mixed dementia; this is a mixture of Alzheimer’s dementia and vascular dementia. She was referred to the outpatients’ clinic to see the Consultant Psychiatrist to ascertain whether she was a candidate for cholinesterase inhibitors. However, before Iris could be seen in clinic an incident had occurred at her home involving her carers and the care manager had contacted Iris’s GP. This in turn led to an emergency referral for an immediate home visit to deal with the after effects of the incident. A home visit was arranged for the Consultant and CPN to assess the change in Iris’s mental state and the findings were not good. Since being referred to the team Iris had begun to suffer psychotic symptoms associated with her dementia.
References: Aggleton P. & Chalmers H. (2000) Nursing Models & Nursing Practice (2nd edition) Hampshire Palgrave Carper B Pearson A. Vaughan B. & Fitzgerald M. (2005) Nursing Models for Practice (3rd edition) Philadelphia Butterworth Heinmann Richards A SCIE Practice guide 2 (2008) Available at: http://www.scie.org.uk/publications/practiceguides/practiceguide02/process/comms.asp (Accessed: 22 November 2008) Sivitar B Stein-Parbury J (2005) Patient & Person; interpersonal skills in nursing (3rd edition) Marrickville Churchill Livingstone