Question

Scenario:

Your 79-year-old client awaiting discharge from the hospital notifies you that their adult daughter has arrived to provide a ride home. When providing the discharge instructions to the client, you note the adult daughter is unkempt, lacks eye contact, and has an unusual odor present.

Initial Discussion Post:

Identify the priority nursing intervention the RN should apply to this scenario and explain your rationale.

Using the model for critical thinking, describe two thinking processes the RN can use to support critical thinking in this complex scenario.

Answer 1

Nursing intervention is the clinical judgement about individual, family or community responses to health problem. The RN should apply caregiver role strain intevention on priority basis. From the unkempt and untidy sppearance and behaviour of the caregiver it looks like she is a drug abuser. This puts the patient safety at risk.

Critical thinking is the disciplined and intellectual process of applying appropriate reasoning to every action taken by the nurse. It helps in right clinicsl decision making. It is the ability to think logically, trasparently and systematically. It is essential for safe nursing interventions. The thinking process involves -

• Analyzing - analyzing the problem. In above case the care giver behaviour should be properly analyzed or observed.
• Evaluating - evaluation of the risks involving the patient due to inappropriate behaviour of caregiver.
• Interpretate - interpretate the actual problem of the behaviour and the problem
• Explaining - explaining the problem to the patient and caregiver with proper and logical reasoning
• Plan if action - after analyzing and evaluating the problem, a plan of action is prepared to avoid all the risk factors and ensure patient’s well being.