Nursing Case Study: Patient Assessment, Analysis, and Intervention

This nursing case study assesses a patient, Jason, focusing on establishing a therapeutic relationship, addressing communication barriers, and employing effective communication techniques like eye contact and indirect questioning. The case study explores the importance of empathy and active listening in patient care. It applies Gordon's Functional Health Pattern Model to identify missing patterns and potential health risks, such as pancreatitis and sexually transmitted diseases. The assessment highlights the importance of nurses engaging in therapeutic and professional relationships and conducting comprehensive patient evaluations, including medical history, physical examinations, and the patient's wishes for the future. The case study emphasizes the need for nurses to be empathetic, understanding, and skilled communicators to improve patient outcomes and overall well-being.

Running Head: NURSING CASESTUDY 1
NURSING CASE STUDY ASSESSMENT
Name
Institutional Affiliation

NURSING CASESTUDY 2
1.
Indeed, establishing a person-centered, therapeutic relationship is vital. A therapeutic
interpersonal relationship is perceived by the patient to embrace caring and supportive non-
judgmental conduct, entrenched in a safe atmosphere during a stressful time ( Lusk and Fater,
2013) At this stressful moment, Jason needs the type of relationship that presents genuine
interest, friendliness, empathy, warmth and wishes to enable care and support.
The therapeutic interpersonal relationship between Jason and health care professional will
improve his satisfaction, quality of life, adherence to treatment, depression, and levels of anxiety.
Ideally, Jason needs to be taught how to handle all kinds of stress to facilitate better life in future
and avoid accidents (Zegwaard et al., 2017). Besides, should understand the biographies
involving their patients as well as their relatives. In this case, the nurse should pay attention
towards the life stories of Jason and his experiences to enable fruitful nursing care. The nurse in
charge of Jason should get to understand him and his ambitions for the future. It could be
challenging hence requires the skill of listening and constructive talk.
2.
Considering that Jason lives with his family, potential barriers towards communication
would be experienced. This is because Jason has no control over who around him hence lack
privacy. The communication might also not be successful because Jason could be having anxiety
and fear to be judged. He is also weak emotionally despite the support from parents and the
health professionals. The relationship between him and Ashley has had a big impact towards his
health and gives him more fears in life (Tilsen and McNamee, 2015). As a result, he may not be

NURSING CASESTUDY 3
in a position to explain his feelings because he fears to be judged by the nurse or his family.
Other potential barriers to communication, in this case, could be lack of skills and strategies from
the health professional thus coping with reactions, emotions and questions would be difficult.
Therefore, the professional should understand Jason could be going through mental crisis leading
to unusual behavior. He or she needs to carefully understand the situation of Jason and the cause
that may have led to disorientation, lack of touch with reality, functional disability and extremely
distraught (Tilsen and McNamee, 2015). By enabling effective communication, the nurse will be
able to handle his state and improve it within a short period.
3.
As a nurse, one should always focus on the well-being of the patient. Therefore, he or she
should embrace good communication techniques to encourage honest and open talk. In Jason's
situation, I would use eye contact as a non-verbal communication. This is whereby; a person
looks at the other party in the eye while talking to them in a respectable way ( Burgoon et
al..2016).By doing this, the patient will know is listening to him keenly and interested in what he
is saying. Eye contact conveys confidence and sincerity hence can encourage honest and open
communication. Not using eye contact technique can sometimes demonstrate lack of interest,
shifty and nervousness. In case the patient starts having negative views about the nurse, it can be
hard to reverse them. Therefore, it is always necessary to focus and maintain eye contact.
Indirect questioning can also be a good verbal communication technique. The approach is
preferred in most cases to enhance open communication. However, direct questioning could lead
to misunderstandings hence discouraging participation (Boggs, 2015).Therefore, to obtain
essential information; a nurse can use indirect questioning or roundabout approach. For instance,

NURSING CASESTUDY 4
one can frame a question and make it a statement and wait for the answer in a while. Also,
through this approach, a nurse should make the patient understand that he or she understands his
answers.
4.
Empathy means having an ability to understand another person's feelings. Empathy
involves viewing things from another individuals perspective to enable understand and relate to
her feelings (Davis, 2018).In fact, it is simpler to empathize with a person especially if you have
been in the same situation.
Responding to Jason in an empathetic manner would require listening skills. Listening is
a vital skill in communication. However, listening requires concentration and mobilization of
every sense for the discernment of non-verbal and verbal messages radiated by Jason. Listening
is a non-verbal communication strategy that would be useful in Jason's situation. In fact, he
needs someone to listen to his craps about his relationship with Ashley and then advise him.
Therefore, I would listen to him in a sincere manner and let him share his feelings. This way,
Jason will be able to communicate openly thus making it easy to improve his situation in any
way possible (Cuff et al., 2016). On the other side, speaking to him as verbal technique will be
necessary. Speaking to him also means asking him indirect and friendly questions hence may be
able to gather important information. Gathering important information will help understand the
situation better thus can help find a viable solution. A viable solution could be encouraging him
to stop irresponsible drinking over the weekend, as well as understand the skills of problem-
solving.
Jason's parents leave the room for a moment, when they do, he turns to you and says;

NURSING CASESTUDY 5
‘I feel so crap, I think I have really blown it this time, my parents are really angry with
me and Ashley will probably never talk to me again'
Response;
"What! Am really sorry Jason, please share with me more am ready to help you
overcome the situation. However, I like the fact that you realized your mistakes but don't beat up
yourself, a man is to error and everything has a solution".
5.
Gordon's Functional Health Pattern Model helps in increasing self-efficacy, reducing
depressive symptoms, coping with stress as well as giving hope to individuals with depression.
The model is a method invented by Marjory Gordon to enable the nurses within the nursing
procedure to offer a more inclusive assessment concerning the patient (Laumann et al.,
2015).According to Jason's scenario, the two Gordon's Functional Health Patterns missing
include Coping-stress tolerance and Cognitive-perceptual. First of all, Coping-stress tolerance
pattern is missing simply because it seems he was unable to control his emotions when they had
an argument with Ashley. Also, he is not good at speaking out things which caused him further
harm. When tense, what helps? In Jason's case, he does not know how to handle anger and takes
alcohol to relax. However, stress made him lose control while riding his motorbike causing an
accident to himself. This is an important pattern that is missing in Jason's life and needs to be
administered. Also, in this pattern would ask Jason how he would handle problems if big issues
came up in his life(Laumann et al., 2015). Will he still drink and ride or look for solutions?
Jason needs to work on problem-solving skills to enable him to face realities in life.

NURSING CASESTUDY 6
Secondly, the Cognitive-perceptual pattern is missing since he does not have an ability to
make important decisions in life.His parents want him to finish school in order to join mechanic
school but he still insists the school is not important(Gordon, 2014). Does he have a
concentration? No Jason is suffering from lack of concentration when he had an argument with
Ashley he lost touch with reality, which led to the accident. He still does not concentrate nor pay
attention to his studies because he does know its importance.
6.
According to the information given, Jason is at risk of getting Pancreatitis due to his
drinking habits. Pancreatitis is a condition where drinking cases stomach irritation and pancreas
inflammation. Besides, chronic pancreatitis interferes with digestive systems which may cause
extreme abdominal pain as well as continuous diarrhea (Machicado et al.,2017).Also, Jason is
said to be very active in sex. As a result, Jason could be at high risk of getting sexually
transmitted diseases such as HIV/Aids. Ideally, people who drink and are sexually active are
more likely to involve themselves in risky sex. Thirdly, his drinking habit would lead to nerve
damage referred as alcoholic neuropathy. This is a health condition that causes numbness,
incontinence, and erectile dysfunction.
7.
Among the seven standards practices, so far have managed to engage in the therapeutic
and professional relationship with Jason. Besides, I have also comprehensively conducted the
assessments. Therapeutic relationship practice is met whereby I could communicate with Jason
amicably. As a result, he was able to open up and share his life stories and feelings. Opening up
has resulted in viable solutions concerning his situation (Nursing and Midwifery Board of

NURSING CASESTUDY 7
Australia,2016). The practice is based on sincerity, trust, empathy, and trust. However, the whole
practice required power to make decisions and act putting into consideration psychological needs
of Jason.
Secondly, I comprehensively and systematically conducted the assessment in regards to
Jason's scenario. In practical terms; it means employing the person-centered tactic to enable
effective communication with Jason. Besides, the assessment means involving Jason's medical
history, physical examination, and general appearance. To enable reliable information, I used
face-face assessment because his parents also needed to be present and required openness.(Wong
and Tan, 2017). The process was successful as I could understand wishes of Jason and how he
could achieve a better life in terms of career and also relationships.
References
Boggs, K. U. (2015). Bridges and Barriers in Therapeutic Relationships. Interpersonal
Relationships-E-Book: Professional Communication Skills for Nurses, 202.

NURSING CASESTUDY 8
Burgoon, J. K., Guerrero, L. K., & Floyd, K. (2016). Nonverbal communication.Routledge.
Cuff, B. M., Brown, S. J., Taylor, L., &Howat, D. J. (2016). Empathy: a review of the
concept. Emotion Review, 8(2), 144-153.
Davis, M. H. (2018). Empathy: A social psychological approach. Routledge.
Gordon, M. (2014). Manual of nursing diagnosis.Jones & Bartlett Publishers.
Laumann, T. O., Gordon, E. M., Adeyemo, B., Snyder, A. Z., Joo, S. J., Chen, M. Y., ...
&Schlaggar, B. L. (2015). Functional system and areal organization of a highly sampled
individual human brain. Neuron, 87(3), 657-670.
Lusk, J. M., &Fater, K. (2013, April).A Concept Analysis of Patient‐Centered Care.In Nursing
Forum (Vol. 48, No. 2, pp. 89-98).
Machicado, J. D., Amann, S. T., Anderson, M. A., Abberbock, J., Sherman, S., Conwell, D.
L., ...&Sandhu, B. S. (2017). Quality of life in chronic pancreatitis is determined by
constant pain, disability/unemployment, current smoking, and associated co-
morbidities. The American journal of Gastroenterology, 112(4), 633.
Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia (2016).Registered Nurse Standards for Practice.
Retrieved 9th April 2018 from http://www.nursingmidwiferyboard.gov.au/Codes-
Guidelines-Statements/Professionalstandards/registered-nurse-standards-for-practice.aspx
Tilsen, J., & McNamee, S. (2015). Feedback Informed Treatment: Evidence‐Based Practice
Meets Social Construction. The family Process, 54(1), 124-137.

NURSING CASESTUDY 9
Wong, S., & Tan, H. (2017). Frames for the Future: Developing Continuing Education &
Professional Development Programs for Spiritual Care Practitioners: A Perspective from
Victoria, Australia. Journal of Pastoral Care & Counseling, 71(4), 237-256.
Zegwaard, M. I., Aartsen, M. J., Grypdonck, M. H., &Cuijpers, P. (2017). Trust: an essential
condition in the application of a caregiver support intervention in nursing practice. BMC
Psychiatry, 17(1), 47.