CASE STUDY

Jon is a psychiatric mental health nurse in a large metropolitan clinic, which is connected to a research hospital. Jon likes the fact that it’s a walk-in clinic.

One day he is just getting ready to eat his sack lunch, when a slender young woman who looks exhausted and timid knocks at his open door.

“Excuse me,” she says. “Can I get into a research project?”

Jon puts down his bologna sandwich. “What’s that?” he says. He’s confused. “Research?”

“Yes,” she says, stepping inside and slipping into the chair beside his desk.

Jon wraps up his sandwich for later.

“I want to know if I can be part of a study for depression,” the woman says. Her mouth trembles. “This is a research hospital, right?”

Jon hesitates, trying to take in what she wants. As he pauses, he does a visual assessment. The woman is in her late 20s or early 30s, attractive, but somewhat bedraggled. She looks as if she’s been on a long, difficult road trip.

“Well,” he says. “I don’t know of any studies going on off hand, but does that matter? I’m sure we can get you the help you need without a study. What seems to be the problem? And what’s your name, by the way? Mine’s Jon.”

“I’m Erika,” she says when her face crumples and she begins to cry. “I’ve screwed up big time!” she says. “I’ve just ruined my life and my son’s life!” And just like that, she is sobbing.

“I’m sure you haven’t ruined anything,” Jon says. He glances at the clock behind Erika, wondering what time the psychiatrist will be back from her luncheon meeting. “Why don’t you tell me what’s happened?”

“I ran away,” she says, still sobbing. “I ran away, walked off my job, and hit the road with my little boy Oscar!”

She lowers her hands from her face. “We just now got back into town. We’ve been sleeping in the car for 3 days.”

“Are you homeless? Do you need a shelter?”

“No,” she cries. “That’s just it! We had a perfectly decent life, and now I’ve blown it.”

“There’s usually something that can be done,” Jon says, handing her a box of tissues. “Why don’t you start at the beginning, and let’s see what we can do.”

“Thank you,” she says, blowing her nose and really looking Jon in the eye for the first time.

Jon smiles. “You’re welcome. Now. Just start anywhere.”

Erika tells Jon that she is a 28-year-old mother who was a “wild teen,” saying that she had a tumultuous relationship with her parents. At age 20, Erika gave birth to her son Oscar, who is now 8. “Oscar,” she says “is the sweetest, most supportive son ever.”

Shortly after Oscar’s birth Erika suffered from severe postpartum depression that plunged her into what she calls “a hellish paranoia. I was some kind of hormonal, psychotic witch for a while. No wonder my fiancé broke it off with me.” She says this with a sad smile and starts to cry again.

Erika has come into the clinic because, she says, “sometimes I think I never recovered from my postpartum depression. I mean, I’ve always been hyper and bad-tempered, which I freely admit. But now I just can’t seem to pull out of it. I can’t sleep; I’m angry all the time; I can’t concentrate on anything, and I’m so depressed I can’t function.”

But things are even worse than Erika is letting on.

“Okay,” she says. “There’s something else. Something even worse.”

She has trouble pulling her tears under control, and it takes her a moment to struggle with that.

“I flipped out at work last week,” she says. “I slapped my supervisor because she was very unfair. She had it in for me. Then I stormed out of work, grabbed my son out of school, and got in the car and just drove, furious and feeling hopeless. We drove and drove and then it was like I woke up and realized I was in another state. I drove all the way to Wyoming, two states away to Oscar’s dad’s house, and all he said was, ‘You walked out on a good job? Well, you can’t stay here and freeload! Get back to Denver and get your job back!’”

“We slept in the car, and I was crying and yelling, and Oscar was crying. It was awful. I’m the worst mother ever. So now I’m back in Denver, with no job and overdue on my rent and no money left in the bank to pay it.”

“No money?”

She shakes her head. “I blew it all on the trip. I was so mad about work, I told Oscar, ‘We’re going on a road trip.’ I thought maybe we’d go to Yellowstone, or maybe Disneyland. And at first he thought it was fun till he saw I was a mess, and then he was just scared. And now we’re back, and I’m broke and unemployed. I never sleep, and I know I talk too much and too fast, but my head is always full of more thoughts and ideas than I can keep track of, and they rush through me like the Indianapolis 500, and sometimes they just come bursting out of my mouth.”

Whether in a skilled nursing facility, a private medical practice, a hospital, or a health care company, a health care manager plays an essential role. Health care managers deal with the business side of medicine, providing the support their employers need in order to deliver the best health care available.

Health care administrators are entrusted with numerous major responsibilities which often include; recognizing the trends and challenges in health care delivery, managing human resources, identifying and resolving staffing issues, and motivating employees and managing issues of conflict.

This Assessment has two parts (Part 1 and Part 2) which must be completed:

Part 1

Write an 850-word report that evaluates the role of a health manager in promoting the delivery of health services in one of the following health care settings:

From the perspective of a health manager, the following must be included in the report:

Format the document per APA guidelines. Include at least three scholarly references and in-text citations.

Part 2

Using the provided template complete each section of the chart for the health setting you selected in Part 1. An example is supplied to give an idea of the expectations, do not include the provided example as part of the completed chart assignment.