Nursing Report: Experience in Adolescent Health and Eating Disorders

This nursing assignment is a reflective report detailing a student's experience caring for a 17-year-old girl with an eating disorder and a history of depression. The report utilizes Gibb's reflective model, encompassing a description of the patient's condition, the student's feelings and initial confidence, and the evaluation of the care provided. The analysis highlights the challenges of maintaining a professional relationship with the patient, the impact of the patient's depression, and the effectiveness of the care plan involving the patient's family. The student concludes by acknowledging the complexities of adolescent health, the need to improve interpersonal skills, and a plan to enhance knowledge and time management for future nursing practice. The report includes references to relevant research on adolescent health, eating disorders, and nursing care.

Running head: NURSING ASSIGNMENT
NURSING ASSIGNMENT
Name of the student:
Name of the university:
Author note:

1
NURSING ASSIGNMENT
Introduction:
Adolescent health or the youth health is demarcated as the range of the different
approaches that can be used to prevent, detect or treat the health of the young individual to
maintain their mental and physical wellbeing (Patton et al., 2016). According to WHO (2019),
around 1.2 billion of the total young population belongs to the age group of 10 and 19-year-old.
The most common health problem that is identified in the individual of these age group is
suicide, eating disorder, sleeping disorder (Elgar et al., 2016). This essay reflects the experience
gained while taking care of adolescence health. Reflection in nursing helps the nurses and the
healthcare workers to gain knowledge and learning from the previous lesson. One of the most
common models that are used in reflecting an experience is Gibb’s model, which helps to
evaluate the experience based on the six steps which include, description of the problem,
feelings, analysis, evaluation, conclusion and action plan (Patterson et al., 2016).
Description:
Adolescent health is stated as the tactics that can be used to take care of the mental and
physical wellbeing of an adolescent. In my nursing experience, I was assigned to take care of a
17 year old girl named X (pseudonym), who has been suffering from an eating disorder. The
patient has a past medical history of depression. By interviewing the patient, it is observed she
also even tried to harm or kill herself. The patient is overweight, that is 70 kg. Her body image
seems to be distorted, and her face and the cheek bones have swollen up, which is the symptoms
of the eating disorder (Stice et al., 2017). Due to her body and facial distortion, she used to
isolate herself and do not want to socialise. Though she wants to lose her weight, has no self-
control while eating.

2
NURSING ASSIGNMENT
Feelings:
The second step of Gibb’s reflective model is the feeling, where the feeling of the
individual after, during the incident and after the event is mentioned (Lestander, Lehto &
Engström, 2016). When I was assigned to take care of the patient, I was confident enough about
my knowledge on how to handle such patient. When I first met her, I felt pity by observing her
condition. By observing the past and current medical history of the patient, I thought that
maintaining a professional relationship is one of the most effective ways to gather knowledge
regarding the needs and preferences of her. I tried my best to maintain a proper rapport with her
to gain information regarding her needs and preference, based on which her treatment will be
conducted. Though I tried my best, but still, due to her insecurity and low self-confidence, it took
a little longer to maintain a professional relationship with her. I realized that low self-esteem and
uncertainty are common in the individual suffering from eating disorder, due to which she took a
little longer to compose herself and then responded to my questions.
Evaluation:
Evaluation is the third step of Gibb’s model of reflection. In this step, the whole action
that has been taken during the incident is evaluated. Positive and negative aspects of the
experience are evaluated (Lestander, Lehto & Engström, 2016). The care plan of the patient was
formulated after conducting a proper assessment of the patient’s current health condition, which
is the positive aspect of the experience. I used the best of the knowledge to provide proper and
quality care to the patient. Though I was quite confident about my knowledge, but still, it took a
little longer for meto maintain a rapport with the patient. I formulated a care plan by involving

3
NURSING ASSIGNMENT
the family of the patient to reduce the overweight of the patient. The family of the patient is also
informed about her diet plan, which is expected to improve the patient outcome (Wolff et al.,
2017). I also recommended certain tactics that assist in improving the health condition of the
patient.
Analysis:
This is the fourth step of the Gibbs reflection cycle. At this step, the whole situation is
analyzed based on the action. The major hindrance observed in providing quality care to the
patient is to maintain a professional relationship. The patient had a past medical history of the
depression, which also created hindrance in the care of the patient. To remove the barrier, the
family of the patient is involved in the care plan. The information which cannot be accessed due
to the insecurity is accessed by the involvement of the families. By completely assessing the
patient, it can be stated that eating disorder at such a young age can also hamper the future health
of the patient. Depression of the patient is also considered to be one of the factors that have
resulted in an eating disorder (Sloan et al., 2017). The recommendation that has been suggested
to the patient is proved to be effective as it helps the patient in reducing the weight as well as
enabled herself to control while eating.
Conclusion:
From the above experience, it is concluded that adolescence is one of the most complex
phases if human life. Eating disorder is one of the most common health disorders that have been
observed in the case of the adolescent patient (Golden, Schneider & Wood, 2016). From
experience, I gained knowledge regarding the care of the patient. I realized that I need to work
on my interpersonal skill as it is imperative to maintain rapport with the patient. Family of the

4
NURSING ASSIGNMENT
patient was also involved in the care plan after some time; however, if they could have been
involved earlier. The results that have been observed should have been improved.
Action plan:
To enhance my interpersonal skill, I will join some course. Apart from that, I will use the
learning that has been gained from experience in my future nursing practice. I will try to enhance
my time management skill to provide better treatment in a limited time. Apart from that, I will
improve my knowledge to provide appropriate treatment to the patient in future.

5
NURSING ASSIGNMENT
References:
Elgar, F. J., McKinnon, B., Torsheim, T., Schnohr, C. W., Mazur, J., Cavallo, F., & Currie, C.
(2016). Patterns of socioeconomic inequality in adolescent health differ according to the
measure of socioeconomic position. Social indicators research, 127(3), 1169-1180.
Golden, N. H., Schneider, M., & Wood, C. (2016). Preventing obesity and eating disorders in
adolescents. Pediatrics, 138(3), e20161649.
Lestander, Ö., Lehto, N., & Engström, Å. (2016). Nursing students' perceptions of learning after
high fidelity simulation: effects of a three-step post-simulation reflection model. Nurse
education today, 40, 219-224.
Patterson, C., Moxham, L., Brighton, R., Taylor, E., Sumskis, S., Perlman, D., ... & Hadfield, L.
(2016). Nursing students' reflections on the learning experience of a unique mental health
clinical placement. Nurse education today, 46, 94-98.
Patton, G. C., Sawyer, S. M., Santelli, J. S., Ross, D. A., Afifi, R., Allen, N. B., ... & Kakuma, R.
(2016). Our future: a Lancet commission on adolescent health and wellbeing. The Lancet,
387(10036), 2423-2478.
Sloan, E., Hall, K., Moulding, R., Bryce, S., Mildred, H., & Staiger, P. K. (2017). Emotion
regulation as a transdiagnostic treatment construct across anxiety, depression, substance,
eating and borderline personality disorders: A systematic review. Clinical psychology
review, 57, 141-163.

6
NURSING ASSIGNMENT
Stice, E., Gau, J. M., Rohde, P., & Shaw, H. (2017). Risk factors that predict future onset of each
DSM–5 eating disorder: Predictive specificity in high-risk adolescent females. Journal of
abnormal psychology, 126(1), 38.
WHO. (2019). Adolescent health. Retrieved 7 August 2019, from
https://www.who.int/maternal_child_adolescent/adolescence/en/
Wolff, J. L., Darer, J. D., Berger, A., Clarke, D., Green, J. A., Stametz, R. A., ... & Walker, J.
(2017). Inviting patients and care partners to read doctors’ notes: OpenNotes and shared
access to electronic medical records. Journal of the American Medical Informatics
Association, 24(e1), e166-e172.