HOW TRAINING PREPARED ME FOR NURSING CAREER
I happened to be in a placement at a local nursing home in the past. I served there for three weeks handling simple and intermediate nursing tasks and related ailments. During my service there, the most challenging issue I received was involving a young teen who was brought by an old granny following an Alzheimer’s disease.
The two approached the reception desk looking enervated. The boy was flimsy and before he could speak a word, he fell to the ground and became unconscious. Together with the colleagues, we helped the boy to the ward for a close examination. He had fractures in the face and around the back. Following the granny’s report, it could have been due to the continuous knocks against the buildings that the boy had received before. Before alerting the doctor, I quickly carried out some first aid to the patient. Together with the colleagues, we released all the buttons and placed him in a slanted position with the legs a bit raised so that there could be sufficient flow of blood to the brain (Daly, Seedy & Jackson, 2010). I immediately cleaned the cuts around his forehead with absorbent cotton wool and applied some bandages. We finally placed damp clothing on his forehead to cool his body temperature.
After ensuring that the patient was well placed, I called the doctor and explained to him about the patient’s condition and the actions we had taken so far. Following the quick response of the doctor, he measured the patient’s body temperature and the blood pressure. He gave out some few injections. He then ordered that the patient to be given time recover as we note his progress continuously. He came back after some few minutes to watch the patient’s progress. By then, the patient could murmur some few words. He could stretch his arms and even turn his head around. I was then ordered to take a sample of the blood to the laboratory for test. In the real sense, there is no obvious or a single test to prove if at all somebody is suffering from Alzheimer and other types of dementia (Andre & Heartfield, 2011). Doctors usually diagnose Alzheimer depending on the past medical chronology, a mere physical examination, proper laboratory tests and the patient’s day to day characters (Courtney & McCutchen, 2010). The doctor through the results from past medical history and the response from the patient’s guardian diagnosed the patient with Alzheimer. He found that the patient had difficulty in recalling, he could not easily remember the information recently learned and a trouble with the brain’s functionality in the past. From past results, we realized that the patient had developed a problem of completing the tasks that he used to handle easily earlier on. He had much difficulty in solving even simple problems, variation in mood; withdrawing his relationships from friends and family members. He also had visual changes and he could not understand images easily. All these past results learned from the patient enabled us to conclude that he was suffering from Alzheimer (Borbasi & Jackson, 2012).
