Reflection On Prenatal Case Management

Today at Lanier County Health Department, I started the day by watching a prenatal case management meeting. A 21 year old Hispanic woman, who is seven weeks pregnant, came in to start her prenatal planning. The nurse started the meeting by obtaining the client’s weight, hemoglobin, and blood pressure. We then brought the client back to the nurse’s office to begin filling out the paper work involved for the application. The woman spent a while filling out the paper work. Because she also does not have full citizenship in the United States, the young women had a few more papers then most people. This client only had a 9th grade level of education and her primary language was Spanish. This made the meeting more time consuming because we

The prenatal case manager does a lot for their clients, by providing recourses and support for individuals and families. This agency also provides education and teaching to patients they see everyday, therefore they help individuals deal with stress by helping manage any type of illness or infection they might have. Another example I have seen would be when a patient came into the health department to be treated for herpes. The nurse was very sensitive when talking to the patient about the subject and helped the patient by discussing her concerns, in hopes of making the patient feel more comfortable about the

We first preformed the hearing test, which was much harder then it appeared to be. Trying to get a 4 year old to cooperate was very difficult. We told her to let us know when she heard the beeping noise and to point to the ear she hear it. The little girl kept smiling at her mother every time she heard the noise, but she would not say anything. My preceptor asked her if she heard anything and the little girl told us she did. Later, my nurse informed me at that age, it is very hard for them to follow the demands of pointing at their ear. My preceptor told me to look for nonverbal cues when dealing with a client of this age. This is something I will remember and utilize in my future nursing career. We then moved on to screening the patient’s vision. My nurse had previously given the mother instructions to go over the shapes with her daughter, so she would be familiar with them when it came time to screen her vision. The little girl was having a hard time staying focused on the shapes, therefore we asked mom if she would help her stand still and to cover one of her eyes. The little girl did very well with knowing which shape we were pointing to. The dental part in the screening was very quick, because the patient had just come from the dentist. Her mother told us she had 20 teeth at this time and no cavities. The hardest part about this screening was obtaining the