Brief Assessment: Reflection On The Individual Patient's Care

This assessment will be addressing the care of an individual by using the Chapelhow et al 2005 framework to reflect on the patient’s care. Chapelhow et al (2005) discussed the importance of bringing together all care activities in order to offer holistic care which addresses individual patient needs. “Enablers are the essential and underpinning skills that come together to provide expert professional practice (Chapelhow et al., 2005, p.2). The Chapelhow approach has six main components which are: assessment, communication, documentation, risk management, professional decision-making and managing uncertainty. This assignment will examine a patient’s care in relation to two perspectives, namely communication and assessment. For this assignment, confidentiality will be given to this patient. This is in line with the Nursing and Midwifery Council’s (NMC) Code of Conduct (2008) which stated that nurses must treat information about patients and clients as confidential and ensure consent is given. The patient will be called Susan and her family has given consent for the assignment to be based around her care needs.

Workman and Bennett (2003) described the nursing process as a systematic series of activities, the first step of which is to gather objective and subjective data in order to assess a patient’s needs. Susan, 78, lives in the Liverpool area. She is a widow with one child, three grandchildren and one great-grandchild. Prior to her recent illness, Susan had lived a very social life, playing bingo and dominoes and, before retiring, had been a cleaner at a local hospital and a home help. Susan has been in a local nursing home for the past five years due to her medical history of Transient Ischaemic Attack (TIA) or mini strokes and...

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... theory. The enablers, communication and assessment, have been used to reflect on the care of an individual patient. I have learnt that communication is important, both verbal and non-verbal, while nursing patients as you use appropriate languages for their understanding as well as recognising and understanding body language. Also, assessment is the first phase in providing nursing care to a patient. Failure to correctly identify a patient’s previous behavioural patterns, in order to compare them to current ones, can cause a patient’s needs not to be met or unnecessary care being provided. This assignment has discussed how communication is linked with assessment, through handovers by any healthcare professions, assessing a patient’s needs while talking to them, communication to their families and always make patients feel included by encouraging their independence.