NURS 45000-Health Maintenance and Restoration for Professional Nursing Practice

The focus of this course is to provide the RN with clinical knowledge and experience in specific areas of practice in order to assume the role of professional nurse. These advanced concepts are applicable to nurses caring for clients throughout the lifespan and across many clinical settings and specialties. The primary focus of this course is on issues related to health maintenance and restoration for individuals and families experiencing chronic illness and their struggles throughout rehabilitation. The course builds upon previous knowledge as an RN. Students will be expected to demonstrate accountability for their own learning needs. Content, clinical practice, and methods used in this course may vary according to the identified needs and interests of the individual students enrolled.

Course Objectives:

• Identify chronic illnesses and their impact on the client while promoting self-management and maximizing health
• Identify psychological and behavioral issues resulting from and impacting on chronic health conditions
• Develop cultural competence and sensitivity in the delivery of nursing care to the chronically ill
• Analyze the ethical and legal issues influencing the health and decision-making of clients with chronic illness
• Analyze end-of-life concepts and assist the patient and family to achieve a peaceful death
• Identify chronic illness issues particular to the aging population
• Recognize the importance of family members on the management of chronic illness and rehabilitation efforts of clients
• Analyze current pain control standards, assessment, and management

Individual Course Goals & How They Were Accomplished:

• Goal 1: Learn more about the psychosocial and behavioral issues related to chronic illness. I think this will help me get a better understanding of my patients with chronic illnesses. I plan to accomplish this by reading the required chapters in our book along with journal articles.

In Week 2 of this course, the content focused on the psychosocial and behavioral issues related to chronic illnesses. The case study for the week focused on this course content. This really helped me accomplish my goal. I definitely have a better understanding of some of the psychosocial and behavioral issues that are related to chronic illnesses.

• Goal 2: Be able to use what I learn about chronic illnesses in my place of employment since I will be coming in contact with many patients with chronic illness. I will accomplish this by putting what I learn into practice while at work. One aspect I think of most is patient teaching. I may be able to teach my patients something they did not know about their chronic illness. I think this could improve my patients’ care immensely.

Since the beginning of this course, I have started the beginning of my nursing career. Between the weekly readings and our group project, I have been able to provide excellent patient teaching to my patients. This includes discharge instructions and answering any questions patients had about their illness. I also used the teach-back method to ensure that my patients understand the teaching given to them. All of this has helped me accomplish this goal.

• Goal 3: I am in the group about “frequent flyers” with chronic illnesses in the ED. Seeing as how I want to work in the ED someday, this is a topic that I want to learn more about. I will accomplish this by doing my part in the group project and researching on this topic.

For our group project, my task was to write half of the paper. This helped me accomplish this goal because I was able to do a lot of research for our paper. This group project also helped me accomplish Goal 2 listed above. By learning more about what brings patients with diabetes back into the Emergency Department, I focused on ensuring my patients with diabetes had a solid understanding of their disease through patient education.