A Patient / Family Care Study on Sickle Cell Diseases.

Abstract

Although the origin of nursing pre date the mid -19th century, the history of professional nursing traditionally begins with Florence Nightingale. Nightingale, the well-educated daughter of wealthy British parents, defied social conventions and decided to become a nurse. The history of nursing first started to become more continuous and defined with Christianity when Christians cared for the sick, fed the hungry and buried the dead. Therefore, it was said that the history of nursing is tied to the church. When it became apparent that love and nurturing alone were not enough to cure disease, the need for a more educated frame work for nurses began to form. As a result of this, Florence nightingale in 1860, fulfilled her dream concerning nursing by establishing the Nightingale Training School for Nurses. It was the first formal, fully organized training program for nurses. In this 21st century, many nursing schools have been established to help build on the previous skills and experiences that were acquired through long years of housekeeping, assisting in child bearing and care of formal sick relatives. The Patient/Family Care Study is a detailed written report of nursing care rendered to an individual and family within a specific period of time. In the model of contemporary nursing care, every patient will have a nurse who is the primary decision maker when it comes to their care plan during their hospital stay and if it was readmission. It explores nursing rendered to patients from time of encounter to the termination of nurse-patient relationship. It gives an in-depth description and explanation of how a patient’s response to a specified disease condition is diagnosed and given intervention. The Patient/Family Care Study involves a record of nursing care, identifying the problems of a nursing patient and how they are dealt with by the nurse in the course of finding solution to the problems. It provides a systematic way of collecting data, analyzing information, and reporting the results of nursing care. Nursing care when rendered properly helps the patient to meet his physical, psychological, social and spiritual need. Currently, patients are nursed using the nursing process. The nursing process is goal-oriented method of caring that provides a framework to nursing care. The nurse ensures that the patient is assessed, diagnosed, and receives continuity of care across appropriate healthcare providers and departments. It involves six major steps which are assessment (what data is collected), diagnosis (what is the problem), outcome identification (objective/outcome criteria), planning (how to manage the problem), implementation (putting plan into action), and evaluation (did the plan work). This Patient/Family Care Study is based on the concept of holistic care, taking into account all factors affecting the health of the individual. It therefore involves the interaction between the patient, his family, the community in which he stays and the health team. It is done using the nursing process approach. Evidence-based practice is a conscientious, problem solving approach to clinical practice that incorporates the best evidence from well-designed studies, patient values and preferences, and a clinician's expertise in making decisions about a patient care. This care study is carried out in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the award of professional license by the Nursing & Midwifery Council of Ghana. It encourages learning by doing, development of analytical and decision-making skills as well as reporting skills. Based on the nursing process, the students become familiar with the use of the nursing process as a basis for practice thereby encouraging evidenced based nursing care. For the purpose of confidentiality and anonymity, initials of the characters are used instead of their real names.