The Scope of Aged Care Nursing: The Role of Advanced Practice in Older Adults Nursing

The Scope of Aged Care Nursing
ROLE OF THE ADULT NURSE IN A VARIETY OF SETTINGS AND INSIGHT
INTO ADULTS’ EXPERIENCES OF ILL HEALTH
Author
Name of The Class
Name of The Professor
School
City and State
Date

The Scope of Older Adults Nursing 1
Introduction
The most significant priority of healthcare models is to improve and enhance the
quality of care among adults. The role of the advanced practice nursing (APN) is to take
this immediate priority and maximize their specialized skills in nursing knowledge to
handle the customers’ needs within their sphere. Older people in the society are faced
with various chronic conditions and different functionality problems. With this, The
society turns to adult nursing as the main solution to such dilemmas. The paper is
focused on analyzing the role of the adult nurse in a variety of settings and insight into
adults’ experiences of ill health.
.
The Scope of Adult Nursing Role
According to (Castledine and Close, 2009), adult nursing is a health practice that
is carried out across all institutional settings as named above. Adult nursing is a broad
term that that simply refers to the general nursing care except for children care. Also, it
has a particular grouping that deals with older people (geriatric nursing) (Adams, 2010).
However, where care for senior adults focuses primarily on physical health and well-
being, such nursing care would fall within the responsibilities of adult nurses. On the
other hand, where attention falls towards mental health conditions of an adult, the same
would fall within the scope of mental health. For instance, the care for patients of
dementia falls within adult nursing even though the deteriorated cases sometimes have
much to do with mental problem.
One of the main areas or ill-health in adult nursing includes taking care of
patients of dementia. Given the high and still rising cases of dementia, there demands

The Scope of Older Adults Nursing 2
to apply relevant models of care that help in identifying specific patient’s needs. The
main role of adult nurse involves assessing the patient’s conditions by the application of
methods that are explained in the nursing theories (Potter et al., 2016). These methods
allow the nurse to identify the exact patient needs and demonstrate effective
communication that aids in the interaction between the nurse and the patient (Cherry
and Jacob, 2013, p.81). Nurses are expected to apply the appropriate theory that would
cater for the patient needs. The theory applied is expected to the provide a solution for
the recognized patient’s problems and assess how level in which the procedure would
be successful. One of these theories is the Orem's Self-Care Deficit theory that was
suggested by Dorothy (Hartweg, 1991).
The self-care deficit theory suggested by Orem features three theories. These
are the self-care, self-care deficit and the nursing systems. In the self-care theory,
(Hartweg, 1991) explains these are the activities the patient undertakes to maintain his
health. In this theory, self-care agency is one’s assimilated ability to execute self-care
needs which also depends with the condition’s factors i.e gender, age, family,
healthcare, etc. Therapeutic self-care needs are the totality of the self-care measures
needed. The better performance of self-care determines the fulfillment of the self-care
requisites (Katherine Renpenning and Susan Gebhardt Taylor, 2003, p.104). There
three types of self-care requisites are the universal, developmental and health deviation
(Katherine Renpenning and Susan Gebhardt Taylor, 2003, p.218).
The deficit theory involves the nurse role in patient assessment to identify the
needs. Once they are identified, the nurse next step is to choose the appropriate
nursing systems of care (Katherine Renpenning and Susan Gebhardt Taylor, 2003,

The Scope of Older Adults Nursing 3
p.218). The care is provided as per the level of the patient deficits. After identifying the
care, procedures and the system, the last part involves evaluating the care to find out
whether it met the specific needs. Thus, this theory was the one successful for our
practice in assisting our patient.
The case I encountered was for a male adult patient, 75 years old suffering from
dementia. For the sake of patient’s confidentiality, this paper will refer to the patient as
Mr. White, and the caregiver (daughter) Ms. X. Mr. White came was presented to the
orthopaedic emergency ward department in pain from a broken fractured Neck of Femur
(NOF) which he had sustain from a fall. Mr. White was accompanied by her daughter X
who also acted as his caregiver. Ms. X stated that Mr. White was 75 years old and he
lived with him together with the rest of the family members. Mr. White is a retired
teacher and had a good memory before his retirement. Ms. X presented a clinical note
from a district nurse (DN) revealing the diagnosis of Mr. White with Alzheimer, a
common type of dementia. The note showed that he had been diagnosed with the
disease for five years ago. Ms. X and other family members have been taking care of
him ever since. Mr. White wife had passed 20 years ago.
In applying the orem’s theory, we started with filling the patient profile, then we
moved to data collection where we collected the basic information regarding the
condition. I.e. age, gender, female, health state, development state, sociocultural
orientation, health care system, family system, patterns of living .etc. We then collected
information regarding the patient universal selfcare prerequisites such as the how he
was breathing, fluid intake, food, elimination, activities (pain/rest) bone fracture and
deformity, social interaction, communicates etc. We also assessed the developmental