A Patient/Family Care Study on Malaria

Abstract

Nursing care has evolved from just caring for the sick and the dying, to an era of assisting people who seek health guidance and counselling, as well as promoting the health of individuals, their families and the entire community. There has also been an extension of care to the sick person’s family and community, at large, in all aspects of health care. The Patient/Family care study is a detailed account of nursing care rendered to the Patient and family to meet their needs. The study is designed to give a comprehensive nursing care to both patient and family from the time of admission till when patient is finally discharged to go home, as well as follow-ups or home visits for continuity of care, hence care study has become mandatory for every final year student offering the Registered General Nursing (Diploma) programme. 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, analysing information, and reporting the results of nursing care. Nursing care when rendered properly helps the patient to meet his physical, psychological, social and spiritual needs. Currently, patients are nursed using the nursing process. The nursing process is a goal-oriented method of caring that provides a framework to nursing care. The nurse ensures that the patient is assessed, diagnosed, and received 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 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 helps to achieve the overall goal for the Quality and Safety Education for Nurses (QSEN) project to meet the challenge of preparing future nurses who will have the knowledge, skills and attitudes necessary to continuously improve the quality and safety of the healthcare systems within which they work. This care study is carried out in partial fulfilment of 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. Initials of the patient was used for the purpose of confidentiality and to ensure privacy.