Question

1. Explain how the following factors can affect fecal elimination (having a bowel movement) and explain why? Personal habits, Diet, Fluids, Activity, Medications, Aging, Disability etc.
2. Explore the Personal Support Worker role on the interprofessional team when working with clients with elimination such as providing journals and descriptions. What could you put in the client’s elimination journal or diary?
3. Can the Personal Support Worker administer an enema or suppository? If your answer is no, then explain why not?
4. Discuss the importance of the Personal Support Worker monitoring intake and  output?

Answer 1

How Personal habits, Diet, Fluids, Activity, Medications, Aging, Disability etc affect fecal elimination?

Personal habits like following a regular routine elimination pattern, doing regular exercises can improve the elimination pattern in an individual.Alcoholism,substance abuse, sedentary life style, fast food items etc can worsen the fecal elimination pattern. Which may cause constipation.

Diet and intake of fluids also plays a major role in elimination pattern. Intake high fiber rich diet aids in easy elimination pattern. A dequate amount of fluid intake reduce the risk of constipation. Certain food items such as spices, heavy hot food items may cause abdominal irritation and cause diarrhoea. Food items like fruits, vegetables, dietary fiber, cereals can improve the bowel function.Gas forming food items like cabbage, potato, certain leafy vegetables can cause abdominal irritation and can cause gastritis. Bland food items like kanji, steamed food items like rice etc will improve the gastric function and improve the fecal elimination. Fast food items are associated with the development of constipation. Excessive intake of food items like egg, meat etc may cause constipation.

Activity also incresess the bowel movements and improve defication regularly. Doing regular exercise will improve the gastric motility and avoid constipation.Aging is associated with incontinence of stool in most of the individual. As age increases, the most of the muscles loss its ability to control the sphincter, hence it may results in frequent passage of loose stool. Disabilities are also associated with the development of constipation. Due to disabilities, the individual may loss their ability to move freely and they become less motile. This can cause constipation. Other disabilities like any congenital defects, cancer of GI tract etc also may cause alteration in the bowel elimination. Certain diseases like ulcerative colitis, chrons disease may also cause alterd bowel habits.

Druga such as iron tablets, calcium tablets, metformin etc can cause severe constipation among the patients. Where as use of laxatives and stool softners may reduce the risk of constipation and they make the stool soft. NSAID drugs may induce gastric irritation and cause diarrhoea after long term use. Certain antibiotics like azithromycin can also irritate the gadtric mucosa and cause severe gastritis and loose stool.

Explore the Personal Support Worker role on the interprofessional team

Personal support workers work with the health care team to provide supportive care to the patients in health care settings, hospice services, old age homes etc. With the adequate supervision of health care provider, the personal support workers can provide desriptions to the patients. They can provide personal care activities like bathing,toileting etc for the patients. They also asssit in activities of daily living, grooming feeding etc.They can provide ROM exercise, assist in walking, moving etc. They also provide health education activities to the patient and care givers. They can monitor the fecal elimination pattern and complete the clients elimination diary. For that they need to assess the elimination pattern of the patient like consistency of stool, how many times they passed the stool, characteristics of stool etc.

Can the Personal Support Worker administer an enema or suppository

Of course yes. They can administer enema or insert a suppository , if they have experience. Usually during the course time itself, they learn about the basic skills like temerature monitoring, vitals checking BP moniotoring, pulse monitoring etc. They will also learn about specimen collections, enema administrations, suppository insertion etc. Hence they are capable to give enema or suppository.

Discuss the importance of the Personal Support Worker monitoring intake and  output?

In most of the care settings, the personal support workers are the person spending most of the tiem with the patients. they will be constantly monitoring the intake and output and they will keep a note up on that. Monitoring the intake and output will give them informations about patients body functions especially whetehr the patient is receiving adequate fluids, body is utilizing it or not etc.The personal support workers need to assess the elimination pattern also. The Number of times patient passed stool, consistency, characteristics, any fecal incontinence, urine incontinenece etc to be monitored adn report to the care giver.