Discussion Post
This is student discussion post. Please read and write a post back in response to what is writting. Please do not use this discussion for future writing. 1-2 paragraph is enough. Adding to the discussion is great. Please use apprpriate reference
For this discussion I chose case study: Dementia. The patient is Mr. Johnson a 72-year-old male who has a recent Dementia diagnosis. The patient lives with his wife, who cares for him but is expressing concern for his deteriorating condition. This puts his wife at risk for "caregiver role strain" (Wayne, 2017). She talks with the nurse about putting him in a nursing home, it is also noted that this can put financial stress on the family.
Many factors can influence Mr. Johnson's health outcomes including: elderly spouse as sole caregiver, spouse expressing caregiver role strain, age/mental status/deteriorating condition of patient. With this interdisciplinary team, we can work on his nutrition status, medication adjustments and other options for care within the home that may be more financially suited for this family such as CNA help with ADLs and other aspects of care that his wife feels she can no longer perform.
One service I was able to find in my community was "International Quality Home Care" which would be able to provide services of a PCA to help with personal cares, ambulation/mobility, medication reminders, ADLs, laundry/housekeeping and even have specialized PCA services for elderly with special health care needs. In terms of accessibility, acceptability, affordability, and availability:
Acceptability: it would be important to talk the options over with the family and at this point it would be helpful to have a social worker involved who can help with financial questions and referrals. This option would keep the patient at home, which the wife stated she wanted while taking the responsibility of all his care off of her shoulders.
Accessibility: Are the patient & family able to afford this service, are there any language barriers, does the patients schedule allow for at home care?
Availability: Is this the best resource for this patient within the community? This patient seems to be a good candidate for at home health care beyond what the wife can perform.
Affordability: Again, is this solution financial feasible for this family, in order to keep the patient at home vs. placing him in a nursing home.
This option for home health care through international quality home care, would be something to look into and talk with the wife over, while we are working on other approaches to care changes (medication adjustments, nutrition).
Internationalquality
Nies, M. A., & McEwen, M. (2015). Community/Public health nursing: Promoting the health of populations (6th ed.). St. Louis, MO: Saunders/Elsevier.
Wayne, Gil. (2017). Nurselabs. Caregiver role strain.
Nies, M. A., & McEwen, M. (2015). Community/Public health nursing: Promoting the health of populations (6th ed.). St. Louis, MO: Saunders/Elsevier.