Elimination of Complexities in Pathophysiology

 Elimination of Complexities in Pathophysiology

Effect of Elimination of Complexities on the Lives of Patients and their Families

The healthy human body effectively and smoothly metabolizes, absorbs, digests, and eats food to operate its many functions, including providing fuel. Similarly, just as efficiently and effortlessly, the healthy body maintains homeostasis by ridding itself of waste products it does not require (Delves-Yates, 2015). In essence, this elimination is an activity that people carry out numerous times a day to remove waste products from metabolism (feces and urine) from the body. Nonetheless, complexities may arise when the elimination process is affected by factors such as psychological, disability, or physiological causes. Consequently, a patient would, in turn, require assistance from nurses and their families.

Having elimination complexities can be a difficult adjustment to a patient’s life. In this regard, they undergo a psychosocial transformation and experience the problem of learning skills to live with the altered body. The need for assistance with elimination is associated with negative feelings, such as helplessness, sadness, anguish, and fear. They also experience changes associated with their social network (leisure and work) and sexuality, aggravating fear of rejection and feelings of insecurity. Conversely, elimination complexities further result in a need for care from family members. The care entails meeting the patient’s needs, including hygiene, dressing, feeding, and financial, physical, and emotional support. Offering this complex support makes the living circumstances of the caregiving families more challenging and proliferates the burden placed on them, leading to substantial social, emotional, and physical hardship during this time.

Being able to meet the elimination needs of a patient both professionally and sensitively is an essential aspect of nursing. Coping with elimination complexities is emotionally and physically difficult. Nurses must play a vital role in supporting patients’ psychological and emotional needs when facing elimination complexities (Delves-Yates, 2015). For example, nurses can achieve this objective through a holistic approach, comprising assessment and working with a multidisciplinary team, family, and patient to attain independence and enable patients to regain normal elimination patterns. The nurse should similarly arrange for referrals to a continence advisor who can provide psychological and emotional assistance, in addition to practical aids to support patients adapt to their conditions and encourage continence.

Functional Patterns

Health problems are determined by evaluating functional patterns believed to be influenced by spiritual, social, cultural, developmental, and biological factors. The functional patterns are essential in aiding a nurse to comprehend the current and past condition of a patient’s health. Utilizing a functional health pattern framework will help the nurse gather data essential to validating and identifying nursing diagnoses (Potter, Perry, Stockert, & Hall, 2016). The mentioned approach is critical because it helps avoid the repetition of medical information already collected by other healthcare team members, including physicians. The medical system framework (systems evaluation, psychosocial history, past health record, history of the family, existing medical record, key complaint, and biographical statistics) is more valuable for clinicians when making therapeutic diagnoses. Patients often complain that both physicians and nurses request the same information. Nonetheless, a nursing history centered on functional health patterns will assist in eliminating this challenge because the nurse will effectively assess the patient’s responses to bowel elimination needs based on collaborative problems and nursing diagnoses.

Urinary inconsistency is an example of a condition associated with elimination complexity. For a patient with this health problem, the nurse can use the elimination aspect in functional patterns to identify habit and schedule configurations and use various methods, such as laxatives, to facilitate excretory functions. The urine, in this regard, is a vital indicator of health status, where the nurse may look for odor, clarity, and color. The functional health patterns framework herein is an excellent way to build a picture of the current and past state of health for the patient in question because it uncovers patterns of both dysfunction and function (Potter et al., 2016). In brief, the nurse will be able to judge whether the elimination pattern is dysfunctional or functional by comparing the evaluation data on urinary inconsistency to one of the following: social, cultural, or other norms, established customs for age groups, and individual baseline.

References

Delves-Yates, C. (Ed.). (2015). Essentials of nursing practice. London: Sage.

Potter, P. A., Perry, A. G., Stockert, P., & Hall, A. (2016). Fundamentals of Nursing – E-Book. St. Louis: Mosby.