Question

Your 79-year-old client awaiting discharge from the hospital notifies you that their adult daughter has arrived to provide a ride home. When providing the discharge instructions to the client, you note the adult daughter is unkempt, lacks eye contact, and has an unusual odor present.

Initial Discussion Post:

Identify the priority nursing intervention the RN should apply to this scenario and explain your rationale.

Using the model for critical thinking, describe two thinking processes the RN can use to support critical thinking in this complex scenario.

Answer 1

The nurse in this complex situation has a thinking that whether the daughter can take care of her recovered father at home who herself is unkempt. Here we cannot directly say about this to the daughter however can be insisted while explaining the discharge summary.

Some of the thinking process which the nurse can use to support critical thinking are

• She could health educate about the personal hygiene,hand hygiene which can prevent transmission of infection.
• Informing that unclean environment can be a source of infection to her father at this age ,as they are vulnerable for infection.
• Care has to be taken while mobilising the patient
• Any unpleasant odor can make patient avoid eating habits and poor prognosis.