CLINICAL PLACEMENT

Clinical Placement

Clinical Placement

Introduction

This paper intends to focus on the clinical placement of my own experience while I was engaged in providing nursing care to patients and their families in relation to care, compassion and communication, infection prevention and control. Different nursing settings can lead to certain complications. One patient in ambulatory surgical facilities can present different situations that a person in a health clinic. The defence of a patient in an addiction treatment centre can be very different than that of a nursing home for patients requiring monitoring of their medication.

Discussion

Once, I was appointed to deal with a patient who was old and had diarrhoea. She required regular nursing care as she was disturbed due to diarrhoea. During my time spent with her, she displayed a variable spectrum of emotions ranging from the resentment/bitterness, uninterested and utter apathy mentioned above, and right through to tearfulness, complete resignation and self pity. Diarrhoea is the increased amounts of passing of loose stools. This can be of more than 300gm per 24 hours. It is normally caused by bacteria and viruses. This can be for a little time period of for a period of two to three weeks. If we look into the main reasons of diarrhoea we will find that it is due to diseases present in environment. The issues related to infection control related to diarrhoea are lack of hygiene, use of contaminated water, uncooked food, and people not washing their hands before meals (Tshudin, 2003 p11). One major issue is that people usually do not care too much in the detail of diarrhoea prevention.

As far as the nursing care is concerned, being the appointed nurse, I had a vital role to play for chronically ill patients in three areas: to enable her to attain a better quality of life, to minimise symptoms effectively and appropriately, and to reduce the frequency and intensity of any potential exacerbations of her illness. The challenges which are posed for health care professionals in order to fulfil these areas are not denied. This can result in nurses neglecting to recognise or respond supportively to a patient need (Robinson, 2002 p13). I focused on providing her as much water as possible as it is essential to flush out the bacteria which lead to diarrhoea. Since I knew that she may need to go to the washroom at any time, I had to help her and give her proper medication after she returned to their bed.

Her issue was not major and she was expected to discharge soon so I decided to give her some advices that would prevent her from this illness. Before every meal I made sure that I washed her hands properly even though I was going to feed her. If a person does not wash his or her hands before having lunch he can become a victim of diarrhoea. Our hands are probably one of the most infected areas since we touch a lot of things when we move ...