Case Study Of Malnutrition In Nursing

Health and Healing 2 Scholarly assignment: Mr. Gurt

The role of a nurse is to provide safe, ethical, competent care to all patients, no matter what their diagnoses, the time the task takes or the amount of work involved. In the case study concerning Mr. Gurt, the nurse preforms an act of negligence by guessing the patients weight rather than physically weighing him. The patient’s real weight versus the documented weight shows a difference of 28kg. This finding indicated that Mr. Gurt is severely underweight; the main cause of a low BMI is malnutrition. Mr. Gurt has a diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease and is very frail. He also presents with three stage-one pressure ulcers. Parkinson’s disease in itself poses a great risk for the patient to become malnourished. With malnutrition comes; delayed wound healing, compromised skin integrity and decreased muscle strength.

The nurse, as a health care professional is expected to practice according to the standards set by College of Nurses of Ontario (CNO). The CNO has identified the following values as being most important in providing nursing care in Ontario, these values include; client well-being, client choice, privacy and confidentiality, respect for life, Maintaining commitments, truthfulness and fairness (CNO, 2009, p. 5). The nurse involved in Mr. Gurt’s care did not abide by client well-being, respect for life and maintaining commitments when she neglecting to properly weigh Mr. Gurt; resulting in an act of negligence. Negligence in nursing practice is practice that does not meet the standard of care established by law (Potter & Perry, 2013 p. 98). Health care professionals need to make every reasonable effort to preserve human life (CNO, 2009 p. 8) and by neglectin...

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...involved in the task. The nurse did not abide by the standards set by the CNO and as a result, preformed an act of negligence. The nurse’s decision to guess Mr. Gurt’s weight each month rather than physically weigh him deprived Mr. Gurt of getting proper care and nutrition that he needs in order to be healthy. If the nurse properly weighed Mr. Gurt, she would have discovered that he is severely underweight and malnourished. The nurse’s next step would then be to refer Mr. Gurt to a dietician, and create appropriate nursing care plans to address Mr. Gurt’s health issues; such as his malnutrition, pressure ulcers and frailty. If the nurse practiced to standards, Mr. Gurt would likely not have pressure ulcers or be as frail because he would be getting the proper nutrition needed to repair damaged tissue, keep skin strong and keep his muscles from degenerating quickly.