Comprehensive Management of Patient, Client, and Community Care
Earlier I used to work as a visiting nurse for some time and care for people with disabilities. Today, I am engaged in the treatment of different patients, including both sedentary and those who are temporarily experiencing some health problems. If I consider my workplace, I can say care management is a process that requires total dedication and constant moral tension. Nevertheless, it seems to me that this matter is important and in demand today. According to Baldwin (2017), the relevant working initiatives can affect both positively and negatively; therefore, it is required to carefully think through all the actions in advance and act according to patients’ interests.
Judging from my personal experience in the field of medicine, elderly patients who have left without the help of their loved ones need as much help as possible. The fact is that not only physical but also moral support is necessary in this case since the elderly experience quite a serious stress, having remained without helpers and got into an unfamiliar environment. However, the task of the nursing staff is to help such people adapt to a new way of life, and the essence of care management is to check that all the necessary assistance measures are taken. Moreover, it is this type of population that I connect with the described term. The fact is that patients with disabilities are unable to solve their problems on their own. At the same time, not all employees of hospitals are always ready to come to the rescue, which is caused by insufficient competence, laziness, and other accompanying reasons. The task of care management is the timely assessment of colleagues’ quality of work and taking measures to correct the current situation in case of need.
Temporal Arteritis
Temporal arteritis is the problem that is most often experienced by older people, but sometimes the youth can also experience some discomfort from such a disease. According to Tokushige (2016), quite often, temporal arteritis is accompanied by autoimmune diseases, neoplasms, and infections. From the point of an advanced practice perspective, most cases are registered among the adult population, and neurological symptoms observed in the course of the ailment are the necrosis of the head tissue, the loss of vision, the ischemia of the tongue and other dangerous phenomena (Tokushige, 2016). One of the causes of this disease the author calls the involvement of the branches of the external carotid artery, and the examination can show that this area is relevant to the problem (Tokushige, 2016). Therefore, physical assessment is an important aspect of diagnosis.
As a possible intervention, Le et al. (2015) suggest using a specific method of temporal artery biopsy. Thus, scientists examined the effect of this intervention on the target group of patients and considered the biopsy method as one of the possible ways to timely identify temporal arteritis and effectively overcome the malady (Le et al., 2015). Quite an important role is also played by educating patients who should be guided by the symptoms of the disease and understand when it is essential to seek help. The effectiveness of the described method and subsequent treatment of the disease was theoretically proved; nevertheless, not too significant achievements were made. Perhaps, this technique is suitable for identifying an acute or an episodic case of the disease. However, if it is a chronic ailment, more serious methods should be introduced to maximize effective treatment and complete recovery.
References
Baldwin, M. (2017). Care management and community care: Social work discretion and the construction of policy. New York, NY: Routledge.
Le, K., Bools, L. M., Lynn, A. B., Clancy, T. V., Hooks, W. B., & Hope, W. W. (2015). The effect of temporal artery biopsy on the treatment of temporal arteritis. The American Journal of Surgery, 209(2), 338-341.
Tokushige, S. I., Matsuura, H., Hideyama, T., Tamura, K., Maekawa, R., & Shiio, Y. (2016). Hypertrophic pachymeningitis as a potential cause of headache associated with temporal arteritis. Internal Medicine, 55(5), 523-526.