Geriatric Nursing Sample Paper
Florida is still in dire need of more nurses and is among the top states in the nation experiencing a shortage. Florida, Texas and California combined account for almost 40 percent of the national nursing shortage. According to the Florida Center for Nursing, more than 40 percent of Florida nurses are approaching retirement age in the next 10 years, leaving the state to face a shortage of registered nurses (RNs) that could cripple the state’s health care system and impact medical care for Florida residents. To further complicate matters, by 2030 1 in 5 people will be 65 years or older.Geriatric Nursing Sample Paper
Nurses are at the forefront of caring for older adults in a number of settings including skilled nursing facilities, hospitals, and long-term care facilities, among others. As the population of aging Americans reaches 83.7 million by 2050, RNs will be instrumental in caring for them.
The next generation of nurses need the right tools to ensure that they are poised to deliver age-appropriate care and address the specialized needs of an older population. Teaching undergraduate nursing students clinical care of older adults is complex and challenging given the large number of students, limited clinical sites, and educators who may not be prepared to teach geriatric nursing.Geriatric Nursing Sample Paper
To address these challenges, researchers from Florida Atlantic University’s Christine E. Lynn College of Nursing, and Rutgers – The State University of New Jersey, School of Nursing, Black wood, developed and tested an innovative new curricular approach to educate undergraduate nursing students in geriatric care. Using six types of learning assignments during a seven-week clinical practicum, 124 nursing students were exposed to interactive learning assignments based on competencies in interviewing, performance-based assessment, clinical decision-making, and problem-based learning.
This essay is aimed at analyzing the level of compassion satisfaction and compassion fatigue within a specialty area. Geriatric nursing has been selected as the specialty area. The requirement to enhance the delivery of compassionate medical services, especially for people with long-standing illnesses, has been recognized as the basis for several studies. Literature reports reveal inadequate health security coverage internationally, primarily related to nursing care of elderly and identified with ineffective medical care, attention, especially compared to, respect and sympathy (Sinclair et al., 2017). Nursing care is mainly guided by compassion. There has been extensive research associated with the delivery of compassionate care as shown by the literary evidence, the political and the subsequent development of policies. Firstly, an overview of practice changes in geriatric nursing care will be elaborated. This will be followed by evidence and analysis from literature. Finally, recommendations for improvements to compassion satisfaction will be highlighted. Geriatric Nursing Sample Paper
An overview of practice changes in geriatric nursing that has influenced nursing care from a compassion satisfaction or compassion fatigue perspective.
The size of the geriatric population in Australia has increased significantly since the turn of the century. The population is expected to reach twenty to eighty million over the next twenty years. The approaching statistical change will have a significant impact on the area of nursing, as it expects doctors to provide extensive measures to consider older adults (Sinclair et al., 2017). Even though it is estimated that nurses invest most of their energy in the workplace, thinking about elderly patients, there is not enough research into the impact of nurse staff’s emotions in this assembly. It is known that the nurse practitioner dealing with aging clients is regularly negative, which leads, in particular, to a reduced nature of the patient’s consideration (Berg et al., 2016). To alter the observations and improve the essence of the attention of the elderly, it is essential to study the components that affect the performance of the nurse staff working with them.
The main objectives of providing nurse care for the elderly are: To achieve and maintain the ideal level of well-being and capacity to identify nurse issues in the initial period; Prevent attenuation of the current condition of infection and avoid the progress of diseases. The system through which the nurse professionals carry out care includes observation, recognizable evidence of needs, organization, updating, and evaluation of nursing care (Mason et al., 2014). By paying attention to the elderly, nurse staff should be aware of the possible complications of the disease and treatment. They must assess the patient’s physical, mental and intellectual abilities; to understand their intense and endless nurse problems; and general well-being affects, for example, the risk of fall, incontinence, insomnia, etc.Geriatric Nursing Sample Paper
In the field of nursing, the factors are known to influence the performance of tasks to integrate the instructive level, the nature of reasoning create particular obligations for employment, partnership cooperation and the ability to form rehabilitative associations with patients (Hunsaker, Chen, Maughan & Heaston, 2015). The lower nature of patients’ consideration and the increased costs of nurse services are a direct result of the poor performance of the nurse professionals. However, most investigations show that the performance levels of nurses about geriatric care may not be as perfect. Several studies have shown that improvement in the clinical practice of nurses is associated with nursing training modules, however; it is doubtful that how the satisfaction of geriatric patients is generally met (Mason et al., 2014).
Evidence of analysis of the findings from observation and the stories from people receiving care and their carers
Many nurses believe that geriatric considerations are both disturbing and undesirable. Another report found that thinking about the nursing care of seniors was facing nurse staff with increased compassionate issues unlike in other populations. It is known that ethical problems cause compassionate problems, which becomes challenging to forget by the nursing professionals (Marquine et al., 2015). These humanitarian issues and agony, which may include feelings of guilt and weakness, may be extreme enough to force nurse professionals to leave their professions.Geriatric Nursing Sample Paper
Research has also revealed that nurse professionals, among other welfare experts, often have negative ideas about the geriatric population (Sinclair et al., 2017). One study found that only forty percent of the nurse staff surveyed evaluated accepted compassionate satisfaction while working with this population; only twenty percent of other social security workers make this revelation (Sinclair et al., 2017). As we think of these insights, tragically, the nurse state of mind while working with geriatric patients directly affects the nature of delivery of care, as many of them have negative acknowledgments. To ensure the best patient outcome in elderly care, it is essential to understand the cause of compassionate failure of nurse leaders who work with geriatric patients, to ascertain the best quality of care for these patients.
Evidence-based practice and the cohort studies show that care for nursing patients is identified explicitly with the impression of the nurse staff for the adult client (Marquine et al., 2015). As a number of nurses are experiencing compassionate failure that they do not have positive acknowledgments about this population, thus, it is essential to distinguish the factors that influence these beliefs in nurses for geriatric patients to make the change and make a more positive affair for geriatric nurses for patients care (Berg et al., 2016). It is expected that there could be first recommendations on how to make a more positive impact on geriatric nursing for all involved. Since negative testimonials discussed above have a negative influence on employee performance and the nature of patients’ consideration, the implications of this investigation could have several important consequences for learning (Marquine et al., 2015). By distinguishing the components that affect the performance of nurse staff in working with this population, it will open the way for further studies and intercessions to combat the opposing belief systems existing in the geriatric nursing care, thereby improving the nature of the patient’s consideration.Geriatric Nursing Sample Paper
The various elements of nurse assistants that can contribute to the ideal well-being and health of geriatric individuals include constantly useful, educative, life-improving, and administrative. “Strong” work involves psychosocial and passionate help, improving lifestyles and relationships, encouraging self-articulation and ensuring social compliance. Intervention abilities include strengthening the autonomy and useful capacity, preventing further health deterioration and inability and improving personal satisfaction (Rao & Kemper, 2017). This is done through attention to a positive patient outcome, which increases the potential of the elderly patients for autonomy, including an ability to evaluate and perform activities of daily living such as washing, dressing, etc. Regarding “educative” work, the nurse professionals should educate these patients regarding self-care exercises, for example, self-medication, self-control, and breakthroughs in well-being (Mason et al., 2014). By concentrating on the administration of continuous restorative conditions, nurse staff can help improve patient’s satisfaction (Figley, 2013). Nurses can show the geriatric patients regarding the importance of weight management, enjoying physical exercise and stress management, thus reducing the dangers of specific illnesses, such as heart attack, stroke, illness, etc.
Analysis of the current compassionate culture regarding the attributes, enabling factors and consequences using the effective workplace culture framework
Compassion is the human psychic ability to understand the situation of another person and to feel sympathy for the individual’s existential dilemma. A person’s passionate boundaries about existential compassion are often aimed at combating the suffering of another person. The agony association appears to be fundamental in the exploration of kindness (Aagard, Papadopoulos & Biles, 2018). To protect the patient’s at risk from eternal sufferings, the perception of compassion for these individuals is critical. Geriatric Nursing Sample Paper
As nurse professionals are the first point of contact for the patients, they must do their best to ensure the health and safety of the patients and their families. Nurses ought to understand what matters to patients and their families. Nurses should welcome families to take part in the patient care process to be able to engage in necessary guidance, make inquiries and provide data (Aagard, Papadopoulos & Biles, 2018). Most importantly, nurses need to build a culture of sympathy with the aim that the welfare of the patient is their prime responsibility. Healthcare facilities must have satisfactory staffing levels and support nursing professionals until they finish their work (Vandrevala et al., 2017). Nurse staff cannot give what they do not have. Most people become nurse professionals because they have a desire to help the people in need, patients who are exhausted, disturbed and unwell, and their clinical environment should help them to deliver care with compassion.
The sympathetic exhaustion (compassion fatigue) refers to the effect of feeling when the nursing care lacks empathy for the patients. The idea characterizes the presence of the nurses, in which the individual and logical impacts outweigh the capacity to communicate with patients in a beneficial relationship (Lynch, Shuster & Lobo, 2017).
The specific hazards for dealing with intensely ill, elderly individuals evolve in professional front, ranging from engaging in meaningless consideration and practicing in understaffed organizations. Focusing attention on the patient by creating frameworks and structures to ensure that review of patient care and disease abstinence helps to understand engagement and satisfaction. Many types of research argue that caring for a geriatric population with a patient-centered approach relieves sufferings (Mason et al., 2014). Together, the concerns about compassionate failure and patient and family concerns contain essential thoughts about empathy itself.
Nevertheless, these abnormal ways of dealing with such a substantial and intense sense of care missed the primary measurement of sympathy for our view of geriatric individuals (Kolthoff & Hickman, 2017). Compassion is a feeling that we feel for the first time as individuals and then as a present, by abstracting it in the more educated domain of nursing practice as a second layer of reaction to the individuals they endure. While theoretical and logical studies of empathy are imperative and commendable, they cannot happen without emphasizing and approving sensuality itself. Seeing how we sanction sympathy in dealing with a nurse-patient and understand the stylistics of this passionate experience is a foundation for nursing practice.
Recommendations for improvements to compassion satisfaction
Compassion fatigue is a kind of post-traumatic stress syndrome associated with healthcare workers since long. Some mention it as a “price of caring” (Kolthoff & Hickman, 2017). It speaks of a state where the health care worker faces the exhaustion of his human vitality in carrying out his work because they feel overwhelmed by the circumstances of care that exhaust the person’s work productivity.Geriatric Nursing Sample Paper
Most likely, the nurse staff needs more than one solution to bring about an improvement in the Compassion satisfaction (Kolthoff & Hickman, 2017). A mix of methodologies will ensure that the various types of circumstances that medical professionals are prevented from all aspects. Preventive strategies such as psycho-education, as seen in part of the selected, actively consolidate some adaptive techniques to shape a minimal program. The use of holistic mentors or life coaches seems to adopt an “indirect access” approach (Berg et al., 2016). It appears that, although the integrated mentors do not know much about the workplace and the experiences of the nurse professionals, they can help the people in different parts of life; they understand more work-life balance, which implies improving the flexibility of the nurse staff. Work-life balance is essential to control Compassion fatigue in nurses.
Evidence-Based Practice Progress in innovation gives easy access to plenty of data to help the nurses in improving their practice. By accessing various databases and utilizing evidence-based practice approach, nurse staff can provide patients with the best confirmations based on intercessions and medicines (Berg et al., 2016). Geriatric Nursing Sample Paper
Other recommendations for improving compassionate satisfaction include the nurse professionals to have the information, abilities, and responsibility to deliver an exceptional patient outcome for nurse care. The nurses should perceive the patient’s social and emotional needs as well as the therapeutic and physical needs. Also, the nurse should work with the patient to find out what their requirements are and how they want to think and build a therapeutic relationship of trust, using competent and best practices. Also, the doctor should look after the patient’s care and respond to your changing needs
The nurses are ought to keep track of patient requirements and the attention that they demand, offer help to the geriatric population that is essential, work with the multidisciplinary team to ensure best patient outcome and to ensure patient safety.
Moreover, the nurses must be persistent, courteous, and careful and manage them gently and protect their safety. Viable Communication is essential to make sure they can understand the nurse (Berg et al., 2016). Also, it is vital to encourage autonomy beyond what many believe is possible.
It is essential to give elderly patients the opportunity to express their emotions. The nurses should encourage even insignificant achievements and allow contacts with others.Geriatric Nursing Sample Paper
It is essential to protect them from wounds, falls, and injuries with appropriate guidelines/courses of action. Elderly are incredibly prone to fall injuries. So give a safe bed, smooth and non-wrinkled cloth. Ensure adequate hydration and nutrition of the patient (Mason et al., 2014). Making a dynamic range of physical activity is necessary. Maintain body alignment, position, and flexibility. Help them build an excellent sleep pattern. Try to educate them on specific exercises during the day so they can rest healthy during the evening.
Provide counseling to them for self-medication, especially analgesics and opiates. In the light of reduced visual perception and the emotional disturbance, they will not be able to understand the direction or importance of medication treatment (Ledoux, 2015). This strengthens the verbal instructions with written instructions for their medications. Explain the adverse drug reactions to the medications that they are taking. The main drug plan, consistent with standard action, encourages patients to take care of prescriptions. Otherwise, reminders should be set on their cell phones, or even medications updates are additionally available that can be made use of. Follow the quality of drugs (Smart et al., 2014).
End-of-life care is crucial and is an essential part of all clinical practice. At a time when geriatric patients are at the end of their lives, healthcare professionals can have some impact on them and their families by creating and promoting a useful situation where their physical, mental, social, social and psychological needs are met (Campbell, 2016). It was estimated that the about half of the hospitalizations consists of elderly patients, but there is hardly any working nurse who is trained explicitly for nursing care and intervention of geriatric patients. In this way, it is of great importance to present the specialization in geriatric nursing, or if nothing else should start with a transition course to give qualitative attention to this vulnerable population group.Geriatric Nursing Sample Paper
Conclusion
The fatigue of empathy includes the constant frustration to react humanely to a circumstance that requires it as a result of past excessive exposure to such conditions or the temporary inability to give an empathic consideration due to burnout through the vitality of sympathy. There is a general lack of research exploring ways in which nurse staff can deal with compassion fatigue. With regular reports of the extreme lack of nurse staff and the lots of nurses leaving the therapeutic departments of different Western countries, we cannot ignore the standard of compassion fatigue that adds to these issues. The findings suggest that a deliberately active clinical environment should be built to draw attention to new nurse staff to reduce exhaustion and burnout while improving compassion satisfaction.Geriatric Nursing Sample Paper