Discussion 5
The assessment that would be useful in the diagnosis of Crohn’s disease includes pain and ulcers in the gut. The examination entails checking blood in the stool, which is one of the common signs of the disease that attacks the digestive system and causes inflammation
(Azer, AlOlayan, AlGhamdi, & AlSanea, 2017). If blood is noticed, the individual can undergo further tests such as endoscopy to evaluate lesions in the digestive system. The health care provider should perform the test before commencing any form of treatment or management to establish the actual cause of the bloody stool. The findings are different from the exam of a normal adult male. The stool of a normal person does not have any blood, and no pain accompanies its passage since the digestive system is intact. A normal person does not have any inflammation or ulceration of the digestive system. The pathophysiology of the finding indicates that the disease has progressed to cause ulcers in the digestive system, such as in the colon. Inflammatory alterations characterize the condition in the regions that are affected (Azer, AlOlayan, AlGhamdi, & AlSanea, 2017). Blood in the stool shows that the inflammation has already formed ulcers. The nursing assessment that can follow the diagnosis should be colonoscopy to establish the extent of the ulceration. The test is used to determine the existence and extent of the inflammation in the colon. The nursing care necessary to reverse the inflammation includes medication and nutritional supplements to prevent further development of ulcers and rectify nutritional concerns (Azer, AlOlayan, AlGhamdi, & AlSanea, 2017). Since no cure for the disease is available at the moment, the management is important to relieve pain and related symptoms.
Discussion 6
Health care providers use assessment and screening tools to establish the presence of a particular disease or illness. The locomotor system is usually complicated and challenging to examine and make a clear diagnosis. Therefore, healthcare providers should use effective tools for the diagnosis. The selected health screening tool for assessing musculoskeletal or neurological health includes the GALS—gait, arms, legs, spine—locomotor screen. The tool has been proven through research to be effective in recognizing musculoskeletal disability and abnormalities in children and adults (Blake, 2014). It uses three questions to test whether the person has pain or stiffness in the joints, muscles, or back. The development of the screening tool in the 1990s was a major step towards understanding the disease and implementing effective interventions. The tool is a straightforward locomotor examination that can be used in medical practice. It provides a practical and standardized way of examining the musculoskeletal system (Blake, 2014). GALS is a screening and not an assessment tool because it determines whether the patient requires further assessment. The screening tool is critical to collect detailed information about the need for assessment to inform a treatment plan. The approach seeks important questions to establish whether a person meets the criteria for musculoskeletal disability and abnormalities. The tool is also important to determine the individual’s needs to customize the treatment and management plan (Blake, 2014). The health screening tool is important to collect information regarding the need to educate the patient about the measures to take to prevent the progression of the disease. The nurse collects information to learn about the patient’s need for exercise or a healthy diet to prevent the disease from advancing.
Discussion 7
Critical thinking is an important cognitive task, which enables a nurse to understand how the client thinks. It is the mental process that involves active and skillful perception, analysis, evaluation, and synthesis of data that nurses collect using various qualitative and quantitative tools to answer clinical questions (Papathanasiou, Kleisiaris, Fradelos, Kakou, & Kourkouta, 2014). The process helps nurses to respond to various issues they encounter in their work. They can understand an issue, collect, and analyze important information to solve the problem. The nurse uses critical thinking skills to understand and evaluate the responses given by the client to make a clinical judgment. Clinical judgment is the enlightened opinion or conclusion that the provider makes after effective collection and analysis of data in response to a clinical problem. Clinical judgment is useful when prioritizing care by determining the health needs that are more critical and allocating time and other resources to them. The nurse should assign priority to clinical problems and provide care, according to the criteria. The process involves collecting and analyzing information relating to each situation to assign priority. Diagnostic reasoning skill plays an important role in the identification of the patient problem to determine the course of treatment and management of the condition. The process helps in making the correct identification of a disease condition to implement effective treatment and management. The skills are important to determine the safe and quality treatment that accompanies the diagnosis. The problem identified is a fluid rather than static process because the problem presentation can change and affect the course of treatment (Van Graan, Williams, & Koen, 2016). Therefore, the nurse should have a flexible treatment and management plan.