Learning Disability: Identifying and Meeting Health Needs Report

This report delves into the critical aspects of identifying and meeting the health needs of individuals with learning disabilities, with a specific focus on a case study involving a patient named Carlos, who has been diagnosed with Autism and Fragile X syndrome. The report explores the importance of healthcare interventions, including diagnosis, referrals, education for the patient's family, case management, and personal care strategies. It also highlights the significance of employing gentle and consistent approaches in patient care. Furthermore, the report discusses the application of nursing models and frameworks, particularly the Moulster and Griffiths model, for assessing health care needs, emphasizing person-centered care, evidence-based practices, and reflective practice. The report details the various stages of the Moulster and Griffiths model, including assessment, care planning, and evaluation, providing insights into how nurses can effectively address the complex health needs of patients with learning disabilities. Overall, the report provides a comprehensive overview of the challenges and strategies involved in delivering effective healthcare services to this vulnerable population.

Learning Disability-
Identifying and Meeting the
Health Needs
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TABLE OF CONTENT
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY..................................................................................................................................3
Health and care needs by Carlos :................................................................................................3
Nursing Interventions to Meet Care and Health Needs of Carlos...............................................4
Various nursing model and framework to assess health care needs............................................5
Identify constraints in implementing care plan...........................................................................8
Various roles played by multi disciplinary framework and their families..................................9
Legal and Ethical Principles of Person Centred Healthcare Approach.......................................9
CONCLUSION..............................................................................................................................11
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................13
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INTRODUCTION
Disability identifying and meeting the health needs is very necessary task for providing
excellent health care services to disable person. Currently different healthcare organisations
within different countries are taking various innovative steps towards for identifying disability
within local people for providing them the best health care services. Currently NHS (national
health services) of the United Kingdom also plays very great role in identifying disability to meet
the proper health need (Grue, 2016). That’s why local disable people within the UK are very
satisfied with healthcare services which has provided the NHS. This report mainly discusses
some appropriate ways for identifying disability. Some other important factors also have been
included in this report which has based on healthcare of disable person (Weber, 2017).
MAIN BODY
Health and care needs by Carlos :
 Health of Carlos needs high attention by nurses and doctors who could provide proper treatment
and assistance to patients where they can address various issues faced by patient, which will
leverage fundamental aspects on which Carlos can feel better. The doctors and nurses should
provide various therapy sessions to him through which his anxiety issues can be controlled and
further counselling should be governed towards optimum best techniques which could provide
better treatments to him for his future lives (Thaut and Janzen, 2019).
 Carlos faces difficulty in verbal and non-verbal communication where he faces difficulties his
livelihood activities and also towards studies within academic lives for establishing strong
working performance. The doctors should look before this problem and take classes of him where
speaking and language barriers should be treated and ethical they should not hurt his sentiments.
Carlos working efficiency can be improved with slow pace of time and regular practice sessions
by therapists (Wong and et.al. 2019).
 Carlos autism problem, Fragile x syndrome has largely affected his sensibility and physical
abilities towards various performances within varied horizons which has also impacted his
attitude towards life’s essential duties. The doctors and therapist should take care of health and
care needs of Carlos by taking special care of not hurting his sentiments and providing him proper
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acre and nutritional diet by which they can enhance his working abilities (Velmeshev and et.al
2019).
 Carlos autism problem has lowered his abilities to gain practical experience towards lives
through low working performance towards academic careers, which has impacted his morale
highly on various margins. The autism treatments should be taken place by doctors, healthcare
practitioners where specialised services towards person care and personal ethics should be taken
high care for not hurting his sentiments (Hviid,Hansen and Melbye, 2019).
 Health and care needs of Carlos can be understood that he faces difficulty in normal walking
also various times in his life through which his sentiments and physical activity of life has been
lowered. The various impacts on his personal lives and his disability to perform well in his
college has highly lowered the various parameters on which doctors and nursing practices should
focus so that required practices of treatments should be governed (Holiga and et.al 2019).
 Carlos faces Fragile X syndrome where various inabilities and low potentiality to perform
various functional operations in day to day lives where the practical working efficiency has been
lowered due to high impact of autism (Chou and et.al 2019). He faces difficulty in
communicating with people and memorising various important topics in lives due to which the
rational proper treatment should be given. Family and friends also play an important role in
contribution towards cooperation while Carlos get treatments and therapy sessions by doctors,
nurses in his home and proper care should be given to various functional parameters and ethics so
that he feel comfortable for long time in treatment (Davidson, 2019).
Nursing Interventions to Meet Care and Health Needs of Carlos
There are several healthcare and nursing interventions that can be used to meet the care
and health needs of individuals suffering from Fragile X Syndrome or Autism such as Carlos.
These are as follows:
Diagnosis: Firstly, the patients suffering from Fragile X Syndrome or Autism such as Carlos
needs to be adequately diagnosed of his condition by the healthcare nurses by a combination of
visual screening and appropriate medical tests in order to assess the exact details of their
conditions (McGuinty and et.al., 2018).
Referrals: After the patient has been diagnosed for Fragile X Syndrome or Autism condition,
they need to be referred to all appropriate healthcare professionals, which can provide necessary
treatment to them such as psychologists, therapists, counsellors and neurologists or a
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combination of these.
Education: Another immensely important nursing intervention is the education of the patient’s
family with regards to various aspects of Fragile X Syndrome or Autism learning disorder, its
symptoms and treatment procedures and expected outcomes (Charman, 2019). This is immensely
important as patient’s suffering from Fragile X Syndrome or Autism such as Carlos heavily rely
on their families and are not completely able to trust the healthcare nurses and professionals with
regards to the treatments they are made to undertake. Education of the family is a necessary link
in order to provide essential healthcare services to Carlos and other patients suffering from
Autism (Rani, Chakravarthy and Reddy, 2016).
Case Management: The nurse is also required to be capable of effectively managing the case of
patients suffering from Fragile X Syndrome or Autism such as Carlos in order to provide
relevant healthcare that can improve their condition (Grimaldi and et.al., 2018). Nurses should be
capable of inquiring and identifying the treatment methods that Carlos and his family are
comfortable undertaking and they should also be capable of successfully strategizing various
methods used with the intention to achieve behavioural compliance from the patients suffering
from Fragile X Syndrome or Autism such as Carlos in order to effectively manage their critical
healthcare case (Abuse and et.al., 2016).
Personal Care: Another essential nursing intervention is providing patients suffering from
Fragile X Syndrome or Autism such as Carlos with guides related to hygiene, safety and self
care. This should be done with motivation and encouragement using methods that reward
patients for appropriate behaviour, thus positively reinforcing the behaviour in their mind at a
subconscious level (Brookman-Frazee and et.al., 2020). It is also essential to provide
interventions that can decrease the anxiety and optimise care given to patients suffering from
Fragile X Syndrome or Autism such as Carlos. It is important to provide help to patients for their
everyday tasks which they are unable to undertake and teach them using positive reinforcement.
Procuring Resources: Another major nursing intervention relates to the procurement of all
necessary equipment, peripherals and devices which the patients suffering from Fragile X
Syndrome or Autism such as Carlos might require for their effective treatment from external
sources or from within the healthcare organisation.
Gentle and Consistent: Patients suffering from Fragile X Syndrome or Autism such as Carlos
have an inherent need for daily routine and are immensely resistant to change which is why they
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do not easily trust healthcare professionals and nurses (Mottron, 2017). This is why being gentle,
patient and consistent with medical approaches is an immensely important nursing intervention
when looking after the health and care needs of patients suffering from Fragile X Syndrome or
Autism such as Carlos.
Various nursing model and framework to assess health care needs
Moulster and Griffiths is structured framework that helps nurses to provide better and
effective health care services to patients that are facing learning disabilities. Nurse provides wide
varieties of support to people that have complex and diverse needs and build strong relationship
with patients so that effectively understand its feeling (Llewelyn and Aafjes-van Doorn, 2017).
There are seven stages of Moulster and Griffiths model that comprise four stages of nursing
process. There are four main principles that need to be followed by nurse to effective treat
patient and enhancing its learning abilities such as:
Personal centred: It stated that nurse needs to give priority to various circumstance and need
but also have to understand what things matter most for the patient. Nurse need to identify
history, lifestyles, family background of affect individual lifestyles and wellbeing. It also needs
to find needs, preference and taste in choice over time so that nurse can build strong relationship
with patients and understand its feeling (Joseph, 2018). Such as in case of Carlos nurse need to
investigate about environment factors and background of family in order to effective treat and
understand feeling of Carlos.
Evidence Based: In order to set up care plan various document need to be their which will act as
evidence that nurse have own experience and knowledge. Therefore nurse need to provide
support to Carlos through using evident and proof of past experience of patients.
Outcome focused: To get best result should be one of the main objectives of nurse thereby it
need to evaluate various tool and technology used by it to get definite outcome.
Reflective: Nurse needs to reflect on various interventions with Carlos so that improvement in
health care can be made for effective treatment of patient (Loe, Heller and Chatav, 2019).
Various stages of Moulster and Griffiths models
There are different stages of Moulster and Griffiths that are used by nurse for better treatment of
patient such as Carlos such as:
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Assessment: Learning disability nurse’s assed family background, environment and need of
Carlos for finding reason of learning disability. Nurse assessed that Carlos was having Fragile X
syndrome and live with his mother and sister. Carlos also avoid socialism an become
hypersensitive to noise, crowded places etc at the same time struggle while non verbal
communication and use repeated word spoken by someone else (Franklin, Smith and Fowler,
2016). Various health issues were also faced by Carlos such as epilepsy and flat feet which cause
pain in ankle and lower legs. It also assessed by nurse that social withdrawn have occur since
Carlos has refused to leave his homes and only went to school.
Care plan
Nursing Diagnosis Goals and outcomes Intervention Evaluation
On the basis of
analysis various
health issue faced by
Carlos such flat feet,
epilepsy that are cause
due to various
environmental factors
and social background
of patients (Elving,
2019). Carlos has
been recently
diagnosed with
atypical autism and
has Fragile X
syndrome.
Outcome of
treatment is to
enhance learning skill
of Carlos through
provided effective
care take from mother
and sister that need to
be socialised and
build strong
relationship,
understand its
preference so that it
can live healthily
lifestyles in future.
Applied behaviour
analysis helps in
developing learning
ability skill in Carlos.
Speech and language
therapist provide by
Social worker and
nurse to effectively
treat patient.
Simple words and
language, vocabulary
are used to enhance
learning of Carlos.
After nursing
intervention Carlos
was able to effective
communicate, use
different language
through learning from
other people. Simple
and easy sentence has
helped Carlos to
effective learn new
things and to be
socialised.
Outcome: Carlos after providing all such health treatment would able to live better and
effective lifestyles and it had been noticed improvement in learning ability of patients. Socialism
with its mother and sister has helped in better health care of individual. Carlos was able to
understand simple sentences, few vocabulary and non verbal communication after speech and
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language therapist. HEF is tool that is used by nurse to analysis and evaluates impact of
social determinants of health inequality on health of person having learning disabilities.
Through use of HEF it can be stated that nurse intervention helps in enhancing learning
skill of Carlos and better living standard. Nurse has build strong relationship to
understand needs and preference of Carlos and effectively analysis various factors and
health issue has impact on learns ability of patients (Stones, 2017). Therefore, it helps nurse
to use various methods such as use of certain language that it can use understands and non verbal
communication expression so that it can easily understand other people views.
Reflection
From the above analysis, various effective treatment provide to Carlos to improve its
learning skill are understanding needs, preference, social behaviour and existing vocabulary that
it used to communicate with others. Nurse reflected that it intervention has made great change in
health of Carlos but one of the most intervention was strong relationship that helps in
understanding patient challenges and method to resolve such problems.
Identify constraints in implementing care plan
Various constraints that are faced by nurse while treating Carlos and implementation of
care plan are family background, communication barrier and various health issue that are faced
by patients.
1. Carlos does not have ability to understand non verbal communication that possesses
difficulty for nurse to explains Patient about various things and enhance knowledge of
patient (Lopez, 2016). But it noticed that Carlos easily follow simple instruction and have
large vocabulary to explains its feeling which helps nurse to understand patients
preference and needs.
2. Second the patient or Carlos usually on every Saturday went to its grandmother house but
following from his visit to grandmother patient was socially withdrawn that create
problem of hypersensitivity to noise thus it avoid social place. That has lead to hinder in
learning of Carlos as individual learn lot of things from environment and other people
that are living in society.
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3. Various health issue such as Fragile X syndrome, diagnosed with atypical autism and
epilepsy has affect health and wellbeing of Carlos and act as constraint in effective
implementation of care plan (Amenyedzi, 2016). As nurse need to take care of health and
various issue while enhancing learning skill of patient.
Various roles played by multi disciplinary framework and their families
Multidisciplinary framework is used to improve and measure wellbeing of particular
individual thus it is process for a better future through enhancing lifestyle. It has helped in better
health and improving learning skills of Carlos as the patients was continuously monitored in term
of improvement in health issues. Carlos mother and sister also have played effective role in
better health and wellbeing of patient through providing all necessary social support so that it can
easily learn new things (Fairclough, 2017). Speech and language therapist was also given to
Carlos so that it can learn language and new things able to effective communicate with other.
Learning disability nurse has also played important role in improving health of Carlos by
building strong relationship with patient and understanding its preferences. Sister and mother
continuously provide social support so that Carlos can easily be socialised with other people.
Patient was facing number of health issue so therefore required treatment of Fragile X syndrome
and atypical autism so that it can easily learn new things (Carrion, 2018). Therefore it can be
stated that multi-disciplinary framework and family support helps in effective implementation of
care take plan and better health and wellbeing of individual.
Legal and Ethical Principles of Person Centred Healthcare Approach
There are numerous ethical and legal principles which healthcare professionals and
nurses should and have to adhere to in order to effectively provide healthcare to patients on the
person centred healthcare approach. The ethical and legal principles are as follows:
 It is an ethical duty of healthcare professionals practicing person centered healthcare
approach to provide patients suffering from Autism such as Carlos with objective
knowledge about all existing solutions and treatments methods which can improve their
condition and make their lives better so that they can make an informed decision about
the treatment approach that they are most comfortable with or might yield best results
pertaining to their case (van Dulmen and et.al., 2017).
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 Another ethical principle of people centered healthcare approach is that healthcare
professionals need to be aware of the stigmatization of Autism in the society and help
their patients deal with this present stigma in any way that they can.
 A legal principle of patient centered healthcare approach is for healthcare professionals to
allow their patients suffering from Autism such as Carlos to make an informed decision
and provide their consent to the treatment methods prescribed to them (McCormack and
et.al., 2017). This is a legal obligation of healthcare professionals practicing the patient
centered approach as it designed to safeguard the fundamental right of patients to be able
to freely choose their treatment method.
 Another legal obligation of healthcare professionals practicing the person centered
healthcare approach is to safeguard the confidentiality of their patient’s sensitive data and
information from external sources (McCormack and McCance, 2016). Any breaches or
leaks of this confidential patient’s data can have major legal implications for the
healthcare organization.
 An ethical and legal obligation of healthcare professional practicing the people centered
healthcare approach is to follow and adhere to the industry standard treatment approaches
and methods so as to provide effective healthcare to all patients and improve their
underlying conditions (Pendrill, 2018). Using maverick medical approaches and
treatments on patients can also have major legal implications for the healthcare
organization.
 When taking the consent of the patients, it is also an ethical obligation of healthcare
professionals practicing the person centered healthcare approach to assess the mental
wellbeing and state of their patients and whether if they are able to make the decision
critically and not in response to external stimulus such as financial or emotional issues, so
that the best healthcare treatments can be provided to them.
 Another ethical principle of person centered approach of healthcare is for healthcare
professionals to regularly take the feedback of their patients in response to the
effectiveness of the treatment being provided to them, so that the healthcare professional
can assess the progress of the patient’s condition since being provided the treatment
(Chapman, 2018). This is also immensely essential in person centered healthcare
approach as the feedbacks can inform the healthcare professionals of which treatments
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that are having a considerable impact on the patient’s condition and which treatments are
seemingly redundant for that particular patient’s case.
CONCLUSION
It can be concluded that there are various innovative ways or strategies available which a
healthcare organisation can sue for providing the best healthcare services to a disable person.
Currently NHS of the United Kingdom is playing great role in identifying disability within
people. But this social healthcare organisation needs to be more active for improving it’s all
existing healthcare services which it has provided to various disable people. On the other side,
government of the UK has highly required to develop and manage some policies in the welfare
of disable person (Swett, 2016). Currently there are different disable people are existing in this
country, in which local social healthcare organisations highly need to create a happy and healthy
environment for these people.
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