Nrsg 366 Partnerships in Chronicity

Running head: NRSG 366 PARTNERSHIPS IN CHRONICITY
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Nrsg 366 Partnerships in Chronicity
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NRSG 366 PARTNERSHIPS IN CHRONICITY 2
Nrsg 366 Partnerships in Chronicity
Nursing like any other profession requires a set of skills to carry out the designated duties and
responsibilities efficiently. Clinical thinking and reasoning are among the many skills that nurses and
other medical practitioners should possess to formulate the best approach in any given medical
situation. Clinical reasoning can be defined as the process through which nurses (and other clinicians)
collect cues, process the information, come to an understanding of a patient problem or situation, plan
and implement interventions, evaluate outcomes, and reflect on and learn from the process (Hoffman,
2007). The nurse has to use the patient's information and then relate it to the medical knowledge to
come up with a remedy to the situation. This essay is a case study scenario of Jenny Peterson who is
diagnosed with epilepsy. This case study should help me come up to demonstrate critical thinking and
reasoning as well as the principles of managing the care of chronic disease patients.
Apart from the principles of managing patients with chronic disease, critical thinking also plays
a crucial role in the process of ensuring patients receives quality health care services. Nurses that have
excellent critical thinking and reasoning have a positive impact on the outcomes of their patients. Poor
logic and assessment on the other hands have adverse effects on the patients since the nurse will fail to
detect the inhibiting patient's deterioration and this will consequently result to "failure-to-rescue"
(Aiken, Clarke, Cheung, Sloane, & Silber, 2016). Poor diagnosis, failure to determine appropriate
treatment and inappropriate complication management are the primary reasons for adverse outcomes
of patients worldwide according to the e NSW, (Health, Alfaro-LeFevre, 2015). The three reasons for
poor patient's outcome are closely associated with critical reasoning; thus this skill is essential in the
nursing and healthcare sector at large.
Critical clinical thinking and reasoning are done is several phases. These phases are crucial as
they ensure a systematic assessment of the patient's situation. These 8 phases include considering facts
from the patient situation, collection of information, processing the gathered information, identify the

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problem, establish goals, and take action, evaluation and finally reflection, (Croft, Gilligan, Rasiah,
Levett-Jones, and Schneider, 2018).These phases are essential since they will help us in analyzing our
case scenario and come up with the appropriate care for chronic disease.
In the phase of considering the facts from the patient, Jenny Peterson was diagnosed with
epilepsy six months ago, and she is currently on outpatient neurology treatment to stabilize the
condition. She is a single parent living with her two-year-old daughter named Samara. Jenny's parents
are living nearby just two suburbs away, and they help Jenny with baby-sitting Samara whenever Jenny
is at work. She is a middle-level earner working as a receptionist, and her divorced husband is not
supportive both financially and emotionally. She either reports working in the morning or evening shift
based on the changing duty roster. We can see the tight situation that our patient is enclosed and all
these factors should be considered to come up with the most appropriate management of epilepsy. In
this case study, we are only going to use the given facts without any further information collection as
outlined in the critical reasoning phases. The stakeholders to be considered in this situation apart from
the patient include Samara and Jenny's parents. The interests of the daughter should be highly
prioritized as we try to come up with the appropriate healthcare management strategy for the situation.
From the medical history presented in the case study, the source of Jenny medical condition was
due to the accident she encountered when a drunk driver hit her car. She was severely injured and
stayed in the intensive care unit for three days before her condition stabilized. After being released, she
encountered some seizures and was administered with sodium valprorate medication. She has been
having frequent seizure leading to taking so many sick leaves. The situation has caused her financial
strain, and she always feels run-down, tired, and she occasionally feel nauseous. She is not sure about
the medication she is taking, and she starts to reconsider going off the pill to see if she will get better.
She is anxious about having a seizure at home with her daughter, and this is giving her too much stress.