Patient Experience and Care

Answer

Patient Experience and Care

Caring, which is promotion of health, healing, and hope in response to human condition is one of the key factors that must be practiced by all nurses in order to ensure effective and positive patient outcome. Using case scenario recording of ‘The Age 75 Patient Experience and Partnering in Care’ and nursing core values as the frameworks, this paper, employing Gibbs Reflective Cycle (1988), will reflect on the importance of care in improving patient outcome in hospitals and among healthcare professionals. Using the scenario, the paper will identify values and beliefs which might have impacted feelings thoughts about the incidences that occurred. It will also analyze cases where care was adequate or inadequate.

The key themes of the patient experience are care and communication. Nursing caring is one of the core values that helps in positive patient outcome. When nurses express empathy, they adopt a shared relationship with their patients, which can assist in digging out causes, explanations or symptoms which result in an appropriate diagnosis and proper treatments (Keating, 2014). Mr. William Taylor, the patient in this scenario has different experiences in relation to caring in private and public hospitals. During his time in a public hospital, nurses did not practice or show any form of care to their patients. Although he acknowledged that public hospitals have many emergency cases with few number of nurses, he argues that health professionals should be empathetic with patients and update them on when they will be attended to. He says that despite severe pain that he was undergoing, one nurse only came to him after five hours to inform him about the protocol and he was attended to after 11 hours. On the other hand, the patient narrates a positive care from personal doctor in private hospital which basically gave him hope that the fracture he got from the fall was indeed manageable.

Staying with pain for 11 hours in front of nurses is a bad experience to me. One of the core values and beliefs of nursing is care and empathy. The final product of empathy and care is patient satisfaction even if the patient has not been treated. I feel the nurses, despite, a big number of patient ought to have monitored the patient regularly and updating him on the procedure and when they should be attended to. Where there are many patients, incoming patient can decide to weight or go to another hospital. I feel such kind communication is important since one can die out of pain yet they can get assistance from another hospital. On the same note, through caring and empathy, a nurse can prioritize duties by handling the most urgent and severe ones first. It is in this context that I feel the nurses in that particular public hospital were wrong and did follow core values of nursing.  

Patient engagement and safety are some of my values that were impacted by the actions of the nurses when the patient attended the public hospital. First, nurses in this hospital did consider the safety of the patient. To me, his case was an urgent one hence ought to have been prioritized.  As defined by Arnold and Boggs (2015), "Patient engagement" is a wider notion that syndicates patient activation with interventions. This is one of my values that I felt was not observed which could lead to negative perception about his condition. The values whose origins are from my nursing experience and practice are important for both patient and the nurse they are designed to increase activation and promote positive patient behavior (Jesse & Alligood, 2013).

One of the inadequate care that was observed in this case is poor medical assessment, which later caused the fall.  It is noted that when the patient reported that he is not breathing well, the GP did not take any effective action to assess or examine the patient. On the same, note after the first fall, GP did not examine the blood, instead focused only on the fracture. This is negligence. The GP ought to have used the earlier provided information to access the condition of the patient. In this case, there was both objective and subjective information about the patient’s condition which could be used to examine the source of falls.  It is important to note that if the GP would have taken the concern of the patient seriously, the fall would have been prevented since the cause, which is anemia would have been identified and controlled. On the same, the second fall would have been avoided if the GP would have done blood test which would revealed that the patient was anemic.

Patient centered care is one of the adequate care which improved the patient’s outcome. As stated by Kautz (2013), patient centered care is a health care which is responsive and respectful to values and needs of consumers and patients. The major accepted dimensions of patient centered care are emotional support, respect, physical support, care coordination, involvement of family and cares, information transition and continuity, and access to care. The patient, who was not able to do things as usual since he had a fracture on his active arm. However, he got emotional and physical support from his wife who was able to bath and drive him to the hospital. According to the study conducted by Dinç and Gastmans (2013), patient centered care improves the patient care experiences and creates value for services.

Inability to provide total care through engagements and communication with patient instills negative perspective among patients on certain health institutions and services. Improper care in public hospitals that has been witnessed in this case has and will prevent patient from seeking medical services in such institutions. In the end, such perspectives can be dangerous to patients or families who cannot access personal physicians and private institutions during emergencies (Kaakinen et al., 2018). On the same note, derisory or late diagnosis is likely to affect patient care. Partial diagnosis will see patients succumbing to certain diseases which could be avoided if comprehensive and correct diagnosis are done. For example, the patient in this case is currently treating fractures as a result of fall because anemia, which was not identified and managed at the correct time.

The medical profession is not all about treating illnesses, it is also about enhancing patient care in any way possible. Caring that has been demonstrated in this scenario through the patient’s family has proved that it is one of the remedies to positive patient outcome. When an attitude of caring becomes one of the core values of every healthcare professional, disease prevalence is likely to reduce. For example, if the PG would have cared when the patient told him about the breathing issues, the fall would have been prevented. Another important aspect of care is from the physicians. The patient states that the physio who operated him was so caring that he believed his condition was very manageable.

Nursing education is one the action plan that should be implemented in all hospitals in order to learn more about the importance of caring. Although this is one of the core values of nurses which is comprehensively taught during classes and practice, it is important that it forms part of duty so that they can be educated about it in three or four times in a year (Brett, Branstetter, & Wagner, 2014). It should be a form of seminar where highly experienced healthcare professionals are invited to teach their colleagues on matters of caring. This will remind physicians on the reason, importance, and the outcome having the attitude of caring as number core value. With that, even public hospitals whose disparities range from inadequate personnel to defective machines, nurses will know how to prioritize duties based on emergencies and severity to ensure safety of patients.

In conclusion, caring is one of the most important values of nursing profession which should be observed by all health workers. Based on the scenario provided in this case, when nurses express empathy, they adopt a shared relationship with their patients, which can assist in digging out causes, explanations or symptoms which result in an appropriate diagnosis and proper treatments. Inability to provide total care through engagements and communication with patient instills negative perspective among patients on certain health institutions and services. It is in this context that every nurse should hold on caring as number one nursing philosophy in order to improve patient outcome.