Patient Assessment

The first thing to do is build rapport with the patient. As a nurse, I must assess the patient’s age, cultures, level of understanding and readiness to learn. The age of my patient can make a difference. When dealing with a young mother, there is a lot of teaching to be done especially if she is a first-time mother. I want to be able to level my teaching with my patient’s age level, in a way that she can feel being respected and acknowledge accordingly. When it comes to being a mother, cultures have some effect on teaching a patient as well because some might prefer for their own mother to teach them on how to care for the newborn. Another way to assess is to check the level of understanding of the patient maybe there is a language barrier
that need to be address. If patient is non-English speaking, then I must provide an interpreter for better teaching. Also, assess patient’s pain level, and if she has pain then I can provide pain management prior to breastfeeding teaching. One way to assess patient’s reluctance is to find patient’s readiness to learn and thus, may have some underlying psychological problem such as a depression or feeling being overwhelmed. When I worked for mother-baby unit as an LVN, I noticed that mother is not reluctant to provide nutrients to their newborn just because they don’t want to. They became reluctant because of some struggle to know the difference of doing the right thing for their newborn. Each problem is being address and approach differently. Mother have different level of understanding, some might be visual or kinesthetic learner. As a nurse, we can always utilize a lactation nurse to assist your patient on proper ways of breastfeeding or other alternatives to provide nutrition to the newborn. Pamphlets, brochures, educational articles with their own languages and even videos are some of the tools that can be used to assist mother to teaching proper ways of nutrition to their newborn. Every hospital where there is mother-baby unit, a lactation nurse is readily available to assist every mother with problems of breastfeeding. Any possible ways can be utilized if proper nutrients can be delivered to the newborn infant. Being a mother takes a huge responsibility, and to be part of providing good health to their newborn is priceless.