Praxis Note on Evaluating the outcome

Authors Avatar

Praxis Note #1

Look back

        Being in my community placement for the past four weeks, I have met many different staff in the home and many of them are very kind hearted people. They know the resident's need and they do what they can to strive for that goal. I feel very fortunate to see so many kind-hearted staff in the home where the staffs are very strong-minded and will advocate for the resident's need. They know how to calm these resident down when there are agitated and restlessness, knows what these resident like to eat and drink and they even knows their prefer bathroom routine. My point is that these staffs know their residents very well. When so many people and kind-hearted and are working together, there is no doubt that these residents are not lacking of any basic necessities. What troubles me in the past is that I see some of the resident’s dignity and right has been neglected.

Elaborate

        Providing care in the community is challenging. Often different people has their own ways of thinking, they work and prioritizes differently. It is not uncommon for different staffs to have their own opinion towards a similar task or situation. The problem is when this situation arises in a health care setting, there is no one person can who is right or wrong and decide what the best approach is that is the most beneficial for the resident. In my past couple of weeks in the home, I have seen several occurrences regarding of staffs having different value and attitude for a resident who has a high risk of fall and some of the staffs’ approaches troubles me in many ways. The question came up to me- Is physical harm more important the emotional harm for a Alzheimer resident?

There is a resident in the home with moderate stage of Alzheimer in her early 70s. She is oriented to person and sometime place; she can also carry on a simple conversation with staff and is capable of walking by herself with some assistive device. She can weight bare and has no limitation to her range-of-motion to all of her extremities. The resident is forgetful and because of this she had forgotten to use her walker in the past while walking on her own which has lead to a fall. After the incidence, the home has come up with a strategy to reduce and prevent unnecessary fall for this resident and that is to use a wheelchair with an alarm system. Their plan was to have the resident remain in the wheelchair and if she gets up on her own without assistance, the alarm will go on and notifies the staff on the unit. This method has obviously has put the resident in distress, she does not understand why her movement has been restricted her wheelchair. She is very irritated with the alarm system that goes on every time she tries to get up. The staffs are also very annoyed with the alarm, which goes on very frequently to notify them that the resident is up and need assistance to guide her back to the wheelchair. This has added on workload to the staffs’ already busy schedule and has put the resident in daily distress. In my opinion, the wheelchair alarm approach has physical and emotional damages the resident’s health which may further predispose her to falls. It has also dehumanizes her and has interfere with the resident’s right to choice. I am aware that this is an ethical issue and I have decided to increase my knowledge in approaching ethical issues in community in this praxis note.

Join now!

Analyze

        Dignity is define as “the quality or state of being worthy; intrinsic worth, excellence; the quality or state of being honoured or esteemed…; formal reserve of manner, appearance, behaviour, or language: behaviour that accord with self-respect or with regard for the seriousness of occasion or purpose” (Webster, 1991). In another words, dignity is an essential aspect of human being. Dignity plays a central role in the nurse-patient relationship. Illness, and especially those who are cognitively disadvantage such people with Alzheimer’s Disease, threatens the integrity or wholeness of the person and can produce wounds that are much more than physical. ...

This is a preview of the whole essay