NURS 340 Week 2 Case Study: Public Health Nursing—Present, Past, and Future

Assignment Instructions

Review the following case study and complete the questions that follow. Submit your completed paper to Blackboard using the assignment link.

You’re a public health nurse working at a free clinic when a 21-year-old woman walks in complaining that she has no energy and hasn’t felt good in weeks. You assess her and conduct an interview with her.

NURS 340 Week 2 Case Study Public Health Nursing—Present, Past, and Future

She smokes up to two packs of cigarettes per day, averages one meal a day, rummages through trash to find items she can sell to buy food, snacks, and cigarettes, and eats one meal a day.
The occasional use of street drugs is something she admits to doing when she can find a friend willing to share with her.
Despite her best efforts, she admits that her life is a mess and she has no idea how to fix it.

• What data can you gather based on available client information?
• What questions should you ask yourself while interviewing this client?
• During planning, how can you, as the nurse, best assist this client?
• What are the potential strategies that would assist the client to a “better” life?

Your paper should be 2 pages in length, in APA format, typed in Times New Roman with 12-point font, and double-spaced with 1” margins. If outside sources are used, they must be cited appropriately.

Click on the Case Study: Public Health Nursing – Present, Past, and Future assignment link to preview your assignment that is due Week 2.

Introduction

This is the case of a young female with serious medical problems; besides alcohol, smoking and drugs are used. Health screening and medical examinations, and various psychosocial assessments would guide the healthcare provider to treatment priorities, and planning for continuous treatment as the recovery proceeds.

What kind of data can you gather based on available client information?

At first this patient needs an explanation of the importance of psychosocial history. She needs to understand that substance use is not an isolated behavior but arises in response to, and affects, other actions. Health screening and medical examination are essential for this young woman. Understanding the level of addition of this young woman is vital for the appropriate medical diagnosis, case management and successful treatment. This information includes the screening and assessment procedures which benefits the patient by focusing on the most suitable treatment. Additionally, for this patient it is necessary to do the SIGECAPS questionnaire, which is a comprehensive assessment of sleep disorder, interest deficit, guilt, energy, concentration, appetite disorder, psychomotor retardation, and suicidal tendencies (Beaulac, Edwards, & Steele, 2017). In other words, this screening would reveal the specific problems and the assessment would give the nature of the specific problem, diagnosis and the particular treatments for the diagnosis. Data would also be obtained with the intervention of primary care screening, obstetrics and gynecology.

The data from physical examination would be: vital signs, nutrition or loss of 15 Lbs. in the past six months, head, eyes, ear, nose, throat (HEENT), neck, lymph nodes thorax and lung, abdomen, genitourinary, musculoskeletal, and neurological. We need to data on the HIV/AIDs status, history of hepatitis, tuberculosis, any other infectious diseases and gynecological problems, use of birth control, history of miscarriages, abortions (Carliner, Sarvet, Gordon, & Hasin, 2017). Additionally, data needs to be collected from any history of traumatic event and violence, and history of arrests.

What questions should you ask yourself while interviewing this client?

I would ask myself about the potential obstacles that this patient foresees; such as financial difficulties, housing problems, lack of transportation. Furthermore, I would ask myself what were the challenges that this woman had to face through her life and how she did she manage them. What is more, I would wonder if she eve NURS 340 Week 2 Case Study: Public Health Nursingr attempt to quit substances and smoking. If she ever identified strategies that worked, at least for a short time, for her habits. I would like to know if she has had any successes in any other areas of her life.

During planning, how can you, as the nurse, best assist this client?

The best approach to assist this patient is with a well-developed and effective nurse- patient support relationship. As a nurse I need to establish an environment of understanding and rapport with this patient. Lack of rapport would lead to poor outcomes and drop the patient’s trust in the nurse, jeopardizing the exchange of information (Osan & Chauhan, 2016). What is more, inadequate communication throughout the initial assessment could contribute to poor patient outcomes. Such impediment could compromise the patient’s ability to comprehend and follow a treatment plan. I would provide questions to allow the patient to express her concerns about changing her behaviors.  During the whole medical interview I would need to invest in the need for a therapeutic alliance with this patient.

What are the potential strategies that would assist the client to a “better” life?

This patient needs education in these behaviors that are putting her at high risk for contracting sexually transmitted diseases and other types of infections. Definitely, the main strategy to assist this patient is to improve her self-esteem by focusing on the identification of any strength that she has instead of fixing her deficits all at once (Knight, Fast, DeBeck, Shoveller, & Small, 2017). Then this patient would then need adequate support services. I would need to understand the cultural foundation of this patient’s health beliefs, and approach toward and acceptance of medical treatments. This patient is only 21-years old; therefore, it would be important to find out if she was diagnosed with any type of learning disability or failure to handle simple life management skills. This patient needs assistance from healthcare providers such as: nurse practitioner, physician, and social services. Social worker and case management would provide multiples avenues of programs for this young woman (Barringer, Hunter, Salina, & Jason, 2017).

NURS 340 Week 2 Case Study: Public Health Nursing References

Barringer, A., Hunter, B. A., Salina, D. D., & Jason, L. A. (2017). Empowerment and social support: Implications for practice and programming among minority women with substance abuse and criminal justice histories. Journal of Behavioral Health Services and Research, 44(1), 75-88.

Beaulac, J., Edwards, J., & Steele, A. (2017). Formative evaluation of practice changes for managing depression within a shared care model in primary care. Primary Health Care Research and Development, 18(1), 50-63.

Carliner, H., Sarvet, A. L., Gordon, A. R., & Hasin, D. S. (2017). Gender discrimination, educational attainment, and illicit drug use among U.S. women. Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology, 52(3), 279-289.

Knight, R., Fast, D., DeBeck, K., Shoveller, J., & Small, W. (2017). “Getting out of downtown”: A longitudinal study of how street-entrenched youth attempt to exit an inner city drug scene. BMC Public Health, 17(376). Retrieved from https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12889-017-4313-9.

Osan, N., & Chauhan, S. (2016). An exploratory study on correlates of depression in young adults. Indian Journal of Health and Wellbeing, 7(9), 884-888.

ADDITIONAL INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE CLASS

Discussion Questions (DQ)

• Initial responses to the DQ should address all components of the questions asked, include a minimum of one scholarly source, and be at least 250 words.
• Successful responses are substantive (i.e., add something new to the discussion, engage others in the discussion, well-developed idea) and include at least one scholarly source.
• One or two sentence responses, simple statements of agreement or “good post,” and responses that are off-topic will not count as substantive. Substantive responses should be at least 150 words.
• I encourage you to incorporate the readings from the week (as applicable) into your responses.

Weekly Participation

• Your initial responses to the mandatory DQ do not count toward participation and are graded separately.
• In addition to the DQ responses, you must post at least one reply to peers (or me) on three separate days, for a total of three replies.
• Participation posts do not require a scholarly source/citation (unless you cite someone else’s work).
• Part of your weekly participation includes viewing the weekly announcement and attesting to watching it in the comments. These announcements are made to ensure you understand everything that is due during the week.

APA Format and Writing Quality

• Familiarize yourself with APA format and practice using it correctly. It is used for most writing assignments for your degree. Visit the Writing Center in the Student Success Center, under the Resources tab in LoudCloud for APA paper templates, citation examples, tips, etc. Points will be deducted for poor use of APA format or absence of APA format (if required).
• Cite all sources of information! When in doubt, cite the source. Paraphrasing also requires a citation.
• I highly recommend using the APA Publication Manual, 6th edition.

Use of Direct Quotes

• I discourage overutilization of direct quotes in DQs and assignments at the Masters’ level and deduct points accordingly.
• As Masters’ level students, it is important that you be able to critically analyze and interpret information from journal articles and other resources. Simply restating someone else’s words does not demonstrate an understanding of the content or critical analysis of the content.
• It is best to paraphrase content and cite your source.

LopesWrite Policy

• For assignments that need to be submitted to LopesWrite, please be sure you have received your report and Similarity Index (SI) percentage BEFORE you do a “final submit” to me.
• Once you have received your report, please review it. This report will show you grammatical, punctuation, and spelling errors that can easily be fixed. Take the extra few minutes to review instead of getting counted off for these mistakes.
• Review your similarities. Did you forget to cite something? Did you not paraphrase well enough? Is your paper made up of someone else’s thoughts more than your own?
• Visit the Writing Center in the Student Success Center, under the Resources tab in LoudCloud for tips on improving your paper and SI score.

Late Policy

• The university’s policy on late assignments is 10% penalty PER DAY LATE. This also applies to late DQ replies.
• Please communicate with me if you anticipate having to submit an assignment late. I am happy to be flexible, with advance notice. We may be able to work out an extension based on extenuating circumstances.
• If you do not communicate with me before submitting an assignment late, the GCU late policy will be in effect.
• I do not accept assignments that are two or more weeks late unless we have worked out an extension.
• As per policy, no assignments are accepted after the last day of class. Any assignment submitted after midnight on the last day of class will not be accepted for grading.

Communication

• Communication is so very important. There are multiple ways to communicate with me:
• Questions to Instructor Forum: This is a great place to ask course content or assignment questions. If you have a question, there is a good chance one of your peers does as well. This is a public forum for the class.
• Individual Forum: This is a private forum to ask me questions or send me messages. This will be checked at least once every 24 hours.