Question

Mrs. Johnson, a 67-year-old female patient, has recently been discharged from the hospital following an admission for COPD. She has a past medical history of a colon resection related to acute diverticulitis. She developed a surgical wound infection that requires daily wet to dry wound packing and IV Zosyn. Mrs. Johnson was discharged with home oxygen. To manage her care at home, home care visits were ordered. (Learning Objective 5)

What would be involved in setting up the first home care visit?

Describe the nursing assessments and management that would occur during the visit.

Answer 1

The first home care visit would include the following lasting for about 3 hours approximately

• Explanation will be provided on which professionals will visit them
• Assessing the area for patient stay and making necessary changes and arranging the equipments like oxygen cylinder (portable), dressing material for wound care,infusion set and medication to administer antibiotics
• Important contact details (phone number) of the home healthcare team will be provided to contact in case of any emergency
• The nurse will monitor the patients vitals signs ,administer medication and do wound dressing as psr the providers order
• The nurse will assess the status of wound in subsequent visits and teach about maintaining oxygen saturation
• Helping patient for follow up visits
• A nursing aide will be provided if patient needs additional support in mobilization, personal care,eating ,etc.,

Answer 2

1. Nurse should give high dose bronchodilator therapy for period of two weeks, depending upon patients current treatment.

2. Corticosteroids that is Prednisolone 40 mg followed by 40 mg for further 6 days which is then reduced to 5 mg daily to zero or down to previous maintainance dose.

3.Antibiotics such as Oxytetracycline and Trimethoprim should be given as per physicians advice.

4.Oxygen is given to patient with partial pressure less than 8kpa on initial assessment.

answered by: helen