HSC230 Cultural Safety: Opal Chain| Woman Suffering From Stroke

Use the topic “Opal Chain is a 56years woman who has suffered as stroke. As a result of the stroke she suffers from dysarthria, which means that her speech is difficult to understand” to design an electronic poster.

Your poster needs to answer the following questions.

1. What is the at risk group your patient is from and why are they at risk in relation to patient safety?
2. What communication strategies as a registered nurse can you employ to increase patient safety for your patient?

Answer:

Opal Chain Is A 56 Years Woman Suffering From Stroke

Introduction

Stroke occurs when the blood supply is not getting into the brain. Low oxygen and nutrients within short minutes causes this condition. Dysarthria on the other hand is an opportunistic condition that occurs as a results of the stroke (Halter, 2017, pp.90)

It causes the muscles weaknesses used in the speaking leading to the difficulties in the speaking. This condition affects the voice in that the patient’s voice sounds different from the normal voice. Handling people with conditions require the professional to handle them with care in respect to their conditions. This condition as it has been explained above target people has been suffering earlier by other conditions like in this case stroke (MacLean, 2017, pp.45). Sometimes it affects individuals with compromised body conditions like tumor of the brain, cerebral palsy, and injury of the head, Huntington’s disease, lyme disorder, multiple sclerosis and stroke as in our case here.

 Patients are subjected to signs like slow speech, inability or failure to speak, rapid speeches which is very difficult to understand, strain voices and abnormal rhythm in voices (Johnson, 2017, 1217). The condition provide a huge challenge to doctors and nurses since the patient do not express what they feel well.  Other conditions may be misdiagnosed. This poster core aim is to provide the clear picture of the patient who is suffering from stroke that leads to other secondary infections like dysarthria. This paper also explain in details the strategic communication adopted by individuals in the nursing field (Northolt, 2017, pp. 44)

Background

Stroke occurs when the blood supply is not getting into the brain or it’s interrupted. Low oxygen and nutrients within short time causes this condition .Dysarthia is a disorder that affects the muscles used for speaking. The muscles become weak and difficult to control leading to difficulties in speaking.  This condition is characterized to the slow or rapid speech and sometimes slurred voices. People above the age of 55 are at risk of getting this stroke. Other risks factors include the race, African American have a higher risk of getting this condition. Sex, man are at high risk of likely to get this condition. Hormone is also known to increase the risks of getting stroke (Hilari, 2017, pp373).

Stroke is a medical condition that prompt is crucial. Immediate actions can reduce the brain damage and following complications individual suffering from stroke are likely to experience other secondary infections like dysarthria and other heart conditions. Stroke may be caused by conditions leading to characterization of stroke by causative conditions (Poorthuis, 2016, pp. 98)

Ischemic stroke is caused by when the arteries supplying the brain with blood is damaged or it is narrowed. The most common of this stroke is thrombic stroke occurring as the results of the blood clot on the arteries. Other type is embolic stroke occurring from other debris forming in the brain.

Hemorrhagic stoke is caused when the blood vessels in the brain is raptured leading to the brain contact with the blood.

This can be caused by risks such as hypertension, overtreatment of the body with anticoagulants and weak blood vessel walls.
The risk factors of this condition include obesity, lack of physical activities, heavy drinking, and use of drugs including cocaine.
Medical risk factors include, high blood pressure above 120/80, diabetes, high cholesterol load, sleep apnea, cardiovascular diseases (Stickley, 2017, pp. 13)

Communication For Nurses

It is a huge challenge for to deal with patients who are cognitive impaired. This present a communication challenge. They are likely to have trouble or maybe become unresponsive to some extent. This pose a challenge on the way they are supposed to be handled. They should be handled with care according to the nurses’ code of work. Failure to handle the patients with this condition with care can results to hostile environment and to some extent the patient can harm self or the nurse (Alloubani, 2018, pp.90)

A clear and acceptable protocols to handle this kind of patient is to try addressing the patient even if he or she does not responding.

Communication difficulties which arise from dysipheria make treatment problematic. However, there exist a number of strategies exist to treat this kind of people. Most people with aphasia struggle to understand lengthy or composite sentences. They comprehend tangible words well than nonconcrete ones. Concrete words describe words that can be seen or touched... Therefore, short simple speech, constructed mainly from concrete words, is easier. People with this condition are helped through slow speaking (Demel, 2018, pp87)

Clues and facial expression is used to help this kind of people. For example the patient with this kind of condition will be shown a syringe when the nurse want to indicate that he want to inject him or her. Pictures are also used to help these kind of people. Example is showing them the photo of the scan if the person want to be taken to x ray. In some cases the patients repeat what the nurse do and so it is a good idea to demonstrate what you want the patient to do or to follow (Rexrode, 2018, pp.518).

Important information generally for the patient is directly conveyed through the pictures, symbols or written words Other strategies which can help patients with this conditions include giving the patients sufficient of the time to digest the message and give the feed backs. Nurse should not be afraid the silence of the patients or to some extent loud speeches they use. Then the nurse should remind them to use alternative forms of communication like gestures or drawing either in a spontaneous way or in response to the instructions. Other forms that can be exploited include the use of writing but in many occasions patients with stroke may fail to or may not be able to hold the pen or writing materials. Writing methods should also be containing some errors and hence they are not reliable. This should need some correction for accuracy (Guerit, 2017, pp.277)

People with this condition are assisted with cues whenever they are stuck for words. A good example is providing the patients with the first word of the sound to help them remember or know how to say that word. However, that is unnatural and works only if the nurse understand the target word the patient intend to say (Varcarolis, 2017, pp.2017)

Another way of helping these people is to provide them with the proper props to aid them with communication. Communication can also be aided by the charts with symbols for daily basic needs, family photographs, maps and pictures.

Strategies are very important when important and essential information has to be communicated

References

Alloubani, A., Saleh, A. and Abdelhafiz, I., 2018. Hypertension and Diabetes Mellitus as a Predictive Risk Factors for Stroke. Diabetes & Metabolic Syndrome: Clinical Research &     Reviews.

Demel, S.L., Kittner, S., Ley, S.H., McDermott, M. and Rexrode, K.M., 2018. Stroke risk factors unique to women. Stroke, 49(3), pp.518-523.

Guerit, S. and Liebner, S., 2017. Blood Vessels in the Brain: A Signaling Hub in Brain Tumor Inflammation. In The Blood Brain Barrier and Inflammation (pp. 253-277). Springer, Cham.

Halter, M.J., 2017. Varcarolis' Foundations of Psychiatric-Mental Health Nursing-E-Book: A Clinical Approach. Elsevier Health Sciences.

MacLean, S., Kelly, M., Geddes, F. and Della, P., 2017. Use of simulated patients to develop communication skills in nursing education: An integrative review. Nurse education     today, 48, pp.90-98.

McFarland, D.C., Johnson Shen, M. and Holcombe, R.F., 2017. Predictors of satisfaction with doctor and nurse communication: a national study. Health communication, 32(10), pp.1217-1224.

Northcott, S., Simpson, A., Moss, B., Ahmed, N. and Hilari, K., 2017. How do speech?and?language therapists address the psychosocial well?being of people with aphasia? Results of a UK online survey. International journal of language & communication disorders, 52(3),     pp.356-373.

Poorthuis, M.H., Algra, A.M., Algra, A., Kappelle, L.J. and Klijn, C.J., 2017. Female-and male-specific risk factors for stroke: a systematic review and meta-analysis. JAMA neurology, 74(1), pp.75-81.

Stickley, T., Gosling, J. and Fox, C., 2017. Communication and interpersonal skills 2: emotional engagement. Fundamentals of Mental Health Nursing: An Essential Guide for Nursing and     Healthcare Students.

Tippett, D.C., 2018, February. Acute Care Management of Stroke. In Seminars in speech and language (Vol. 39, No. 01, pp. 001-002). Thieme Medical Publishers.

Wittenberg, E., Ragan, S.L. and Ferrell, B., 2017. Exploring nurse communication about spirituality. American Journal of Hospice and Palliative Medicine®, 34(6), pp.566-571.

Wright, R., Chabala, P., Hornyak, V. and Schulz, R., 2017. Improving Communication between Health Professions Students and People with Later Stage Dementia. Journal of the     American Medical Directors Association, 18(3), p.B9.