Bacterial Pneumonia Assignment Report

Running head: NURSING ASSIGNMENT
NURSING ASSIGNMENT
Name of the Student
Name of the university
Author’s note

NURSING ASSIGNMENT
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CASE STUDY
The chosen case study is about Jim Cooper , a 69 years old man who had been presented
with a 1week history of productive cough and shortness of breath. The local GP had prescribed
him with an antibiotic. He has been sitting on the chair for the past few nights and had been
finding it to care for himself at home. He had been a local truck driver and had lost his wife
around 18 months ago. Patient had been a smoker in the past and had stopped smoking almost
five years back. Patient is a drinker and had admitted that drinking helped him to calm his
nerves. Jim had admitted that he had been feeling lonely for the past few months.
FIVE HEALTH CARE ISSUES
On thorough physical examination and the arterial blood gas results, five clinical issues has
been identified. The five health care issues are listed below-
 Shortness of breath
As manifested by the symptoms, the patient was experiencing one of the common symptoms of
COPD- shortness of breath. Shortness of breath in the patients can also be manifested his arterial
blood gas results, which shows that his oxidation saturation level is 88%, which is considerably
lower than the normal value (Prina, Ranzani and Torres, 2015.). Patients suffering from a
community acquired pneumonia are likely to suffer from the shortness of breath. In bacterial
pneumonia, due to the colonization of the bacteria in the lungs, the lung alveoli gets
inflammated. Hence the lungs become less elastic impairing the exchange of oxygen in the lungs.
Inflammation of the bronchi causes the passage of airways to be different.

NURSING ASSIGNMENT
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 Ineffective airway clearance – Airways narrows down due to the inflammation of the
airways and accumulation of excessive mucous in the airways makes airway passage
difficult (Jain, et al., 2015).
 Productive cough- cough is generated in response to the inflammatory response taking
place inside the body.
 GORD- According to Jain, et al., (2015), acid reflux has been found to be linked to
shortness of breath, as the acid from the stomach might creep into the esophagus and can
enter the lungs, especially during the night.
 Hypercholesterolaemia- The cholesterol level of the body needs to be increased, as the
risk of heart diseases increase soon after contracting a community acquired pneumonia.
 Poor skin the turgor- It is evident from the case study that lack of skin turgor has been
found due to dehydration.
The three main health care issues that are within the scope of nursing practice are as addressing
the issue of shortness of breath in the patient, occurrence of productive cough and ineffective
airway clearance.
THREE HIGHEST PRIORITY HEALTH ISSUES
The three priority health issues that has been identified are ineffective patterns of
breathing, production of sputum and ineffective clearance of the airways. The narrowing down
of the airways mainly occurs due to inflammation of the airways and the airway remodeling that
occurs in the airways due to inflammation (Komiya, Ishii and Kadota 2015). Purulent sputum
might contain puss, white blood cells, dead tissue and cellular debris. Addressing shortness of
breath is a challenging tasks, yet is needed by everybody. Shortness of breath has been
associated lower level of functionality and makes certain daily activities of living like eating,