Mental health Acute ward for adults

Assignment Task Subject Mental health Acute ward for adults

Patient Outcomes should be a priority in the nursing care that nurses deliver to patients. During a nurse’s every day practice they have a responsibility to identify risk factors and implement strategies to prevent adverse outcomes from occurring to patients. Each clinical setting has its unique issues that may be more prevalent than in other areas. For example, in an aged care setting the risk for patients experiencing falls may be more so than patients in an operating room.

Develop a report that reviews a current issue impacting on patient outcomes within your Nursing Project placement setting and justify recommendations to improve patient outcomes.

The target audience for the report may comprise the Nursing Unit Manager or equivalent, Nurse Clinical Educator, registered nurses, enrolled nurses and/or student nurse peers working within the clinical area in which you are placed.

Review of current practice for triage of mental health patients in the Emergency also Inpatient units. Unit and develop recommendations to improve patient outcomes.

Instructions

When addressing the assignment topic you are required to write in third person, read widely and reference correctly as referencing constitutes 20% of your overall mark for this assessment. The Workbook or Course Profile should not be used as reference sources. Please ensure all assessable items are in the body of the paper as the appendix will not be marked.

Word limit for this assessment is 2500 words. A 10% leeway on either side of the word limit will be accepted. The word count will include the first word of the Introduction to the last word of the Conclusion including in-text referencing. Not included in the word count are the Title Page, Executive Summary (or Abstract), Contents Page and Reference List.

Critical thinking and problem solving skills are required by the RN. To be able to effectively critically think and problem solve the RN must be able to reflect on their own knowledge and skills.

Requiring 20 references 10 Peer journals being up to date no older than 3 years and text books resources being the same . Intext referencing including page numbers to be included.

APA Referencing also contents page.

Please Use the mental health ACT of Queensland Australia

Hot Tip 1 – Written Report – ‘Target Audience’ for your written report

Dear All,

You may have been wondering why you are being asked to develop a clinical report…for what purpose you may well ask?

If you’ve been wrestling with this notion then I’d ask you to think about: Who would be the target audience for a clinically focussed written report such as this, that is, besides the lecturer/marker when it is being written for assessment purposes? The answer to this question may help you to better understand the intention of this written report.

For instance, in reality, at some point in your future life as a health care professional, you may become aware of issues or certain practices within your work environment that could perhaps be changed or modified to improve outcomes for patients.

What can you do if such a circumstance should arise? Well…you could talk to your colleagues and line managers about the issue at unit meetings. However, often the written word carries more impact! So with that in mind, you could also follow up by enlisting a professional approach to initiate change by writing a formal report, in which you identify the issue/s; present what is currently being said about the issue in the relevant literature; and then make some recommendations with a view to improving outcomes within your work area.

Hot Tip 2 – Written Report – Identifying the report topic

FIRSTLY…The intention of the clinical report is to provide information to support an argument for improving current patient outcomes by implementing some changes/new practices related to patient care. Some of the emerging recommendations/strategies for change may relate to education of staff, patients and/or visitors.

IMPORTANTLY…The topic chosen must be drawn from your current clinical placement once/after the placement has commenced and NOT beforehand. This is because under ‘Background’ you will need to discuss what you actually observed/identified that led you to the chosen topic once on prac.

IN OTHER WORDS…When drafting your report remember that the main thrust of the written clinical report is that you identify an issue or some aspect of nursing care or patient management etc within your current clinical placement where patient outcomes could perhaps be improved through some changes/additions to current practice (and these changes/additions would be identified within the Recommendations section of the report as well).

SO TO EMPHASISE…as per the issue that you identify, you need to discuss exactly what you’ve directly observed or discussed with RNs within your current clinical placement (under ‘Background’), which provided the stimulus for your idea in relation to what could perhaps be done better or slightly differently to improve patient outcomes (and also supported by the relevant literature on the topic). You may have observed a specific issue/incident in relation to one patient but this could have implications for future patients. **This is the required approach rather than…OK I’m in ICU and I have read up on this area beforehand and learnt there is a potential for ventilator related pneumonia, for example, so I think I might choose this and write a report on it.

FURTHERMORE…Although there are probably polices in place already for the management of various patient procedures/conditions etc perhaps there is still more that can be done, as supported by the relevant literature on the topic. Alternatively, perhaps staff are not aware of or following the policy?

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Hot Tip 3 – Introduction and Aim, Scope and Background to the Study

Firstly, the aim, scope & background are all sub headings under Introduction. So to begin with you can provide a couple of sentences which are introducing the topic or “setting the stage” for the report. In other words, giving a clear direction as to what the focus will be within the sub headings/sections to follow.

I’ve provided one possible hypothetical example below, which relates to the patient outcome issue of communication between critical care nurses and intubated patients. The stimulus for this may have been identifying (whilst on clinical placement) that the most communication given to critically ill and intubated patients seemed to only be associated with some simple explanations of what the nurse was about to do to the patient.

1.0 Introduction

The importance of effective communication in the development of therapeutic nurse-patient relationships is well recognised within nursing practice. Clearly, the challenge exists for critical care nurses to offer patients communication that meets all of their essential human needs.

1.1 Aim

The purpose of this report is to discuss the communication observed between critical care nurses and their critically ill intubated patients while undertaking a recent clinical placement as a third year student nurse. Based upon this clinical experience, recommendations to improve the amount and effectiveness of this nurse-patient communication will be provided. If the communication processes of this nurse-patient relationship are optimised then positive psychological and physical outcomes are possible for the patient.

1.2 Scope

Because this report focused on communication between the nurse and the patient, interactions with other members of the health care team were beyond the scope of the report and therefore were excluded. The observed communication between critical care nurses and patients’ relatives and significant others was also beyond the scope of this report.

Please note: As per the above example: “Under ‘scope’, you can limit the focus of your report by discussing the various aspects related to the issue but then clearly identify what it is that this report will address and what it will not address. For example, for the purpose of this report, a, b & c will be addressed but any discussion of e, f & g is beyond the scope of this report.”

1.3 Background (see guidelines document posted to the Moodle site)

This is where you actually discuss the stimulus for your idea for developing the written report…(as per the guidelines for the ‘structure of a written report’ document).

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Hot Tip 4 – Use of Third Person & Background to Study (and Confidentiality)

Background of the study section requires you to discuss what it was you identified/observed while on clinical placement and, that in turn, led you to your chosen topic.

Please find below a couple of examples of how you can discuss your own experience whilst maintaining the use of third person (as required throughout the report), that is, without adopting 1st person. Also, the following examples indicate how you can maintain the confidentiality of the health care ward/unit and facility:

Example 1: While undertaking a third year nursing placement in the post anaesthetic care unit (PACU) of the perioperative ward of a south east Queensland hospital, the author identified many incidences of patients…

Example 2: …On one particular shift that the author experienced whilst on clinical placement, there was a patient allocation to a registered nurse…

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Hot Tip 5 – Data Collection Methods section

This isn’t really a very lengthy section. You state the search terms that you came up with given the topic chosen.

Discuss how successful these search terms were initially and if they required further refinement and, if so, why?.

Then what databases proved to be most useful/relevant and so forth.

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Hot Tip 6 – Analysis of Data

You are correct in wanting to present a balanced discussion under ‘Analysis of Data’ by incorporating both research and non-research articles relevant to your topic.

However, please do not confuse the development of this report with a Research Project report associated with the course Research in Health Care. There should be no gathering of data in the research sense, for example, by including qualitative interviews with patients or any other form of statistical gathering and measuring of data.

Addtionally, this is NOT a Case Study and so you are NOT to present a detailed account of the circumstances surrounding one patient/consumer. Although the stimulus for your report may relate to one particular patient and discussed under Background, you are to approach the development of the report from the perspective of improving patient outcomes for this patient cohort in general. For instance, you may have identified a clinical issue in regard to a patient who was admitted to a medical unit with heart failure and so you would, for example, approach the report from the perspective of developing strategies to modify/change nursing care to improve the outcomes of all patients experiencing heart failure when admitted to this medical ward. Rather than focus on the condition of heart failure within the context of this one particular patient who sparked your idea that nursing care could be improved.

**The written report for Nursing Project has a clinical focus and, as such, has a different intention to that of a Research Report or Case Study.

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Hot Tip 7 – Conclusion (including Recommendations)

Conclusion covers the writer’s judgement based on information in the body of the report.

Recommendations:

• gives solutions to the problems

• suggests possible courses of action as a result of the conclusions, for example:

– who should take action

– what should be done

– when and how it should be done

Basically, the recommendations should relate or link to the thesis statement/argument, purpose of the report and background section etc. They may include something that you have read in the relevant literature, or an original thought or idea that you may have had. If it is something that is in an already existing protocol for example, then you may wish to base a recommendation on this. Be sure to reference in-text any recommendation that is not perceived by you to be your own original thought.

IMPORTANT: Recommendations should be drawn from the discussion of the topic, as per the relevant literature under ‘Analysis of the Data’ and, as such, a clear link to the ‘Recommendations’ section under ‘Conclusion’ should be obvious.

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Hot Tip 8 – References and Appendices

In regard to the references: peer reviewed from relevant journal articles is preferable. Be sure to include recent journal articles (i.e. recent meaning within the last 5 years of publication).

The number of required journal articles is indicated within the marking criteria table so please be guided by these as a minimal requirement.

Remember too that relevance of the journal articles to the content of the report is equally as important a criteria as including the minimal number of journal articles.

You can then incorporate the requred number of recent, relevant journal articles into the ‘Analysis of the Data’ section of the report and other sections as appropriate/required.

**A Reference List is mandatory for this report but Appendices are optional.