Post 5:
In my work as a nurse, I’ve noticed that teen depression is getting worse. Teenage mental illness is a major public health problem that is getting worse in the US. In the 21st century, teens’ risks and behaviors have changed dramatically, putting their mental health at greater risk than ever before. Teenagers make up 12% of the US population, and 30% of them report having depression symptoms every year. Teenagers’ mental health has many different parts and many risks that make them vulnerable. Teenagers are a vulnerable group and by nature are more likely to have mental health problems. In all healthcare settings, nurses are very important when it comes to figuring out how vulnerable people are. Formal and informal evaluations that can find teens who might be at risk for mental illness saves lives. Nurses must first understand how complicated the many risk factors that can lead to mental illness are, how important it is to catch it early, and how to use valid assessment and screening tools. Nurses need to know about the needs of vulnerable groups, as well as about mental illness and suicidal behavior, and they should look for signs of mental health problems whenever they can. When evaluating a patient, nurses need to know about certain signs that show a teen has mental health problems or is at a higher risk. Even if they are not trained mental health professionals, all nurses should know how to assess and help. Nurses are in the best position to get to know their patients and their families, find out about their history and how their families work, and give them information and resources. Using nursing research to deal with this problem can help find those at risk and cut down on the number of teens with mental illness.
Farley, Holly R., EdD, RN, Assessing the mental health of at-risk teens. Nursing: Volume 50, Issue 10, Pages 48–53, October 2020, doi: 10.1097/01.NURSE.0000697168.39814.93
Post 6:
One of the most important parts of nursing practice is nursing research. Research in nursing is a good way to find out how to solve problems in nursing practice. One of these is when a patient falls. A patient fall is an unplanned drop to the floor, whether or not the patient is hurt. Patients are affected in a big way by falls. A lot of patients get hurt. These injuries cause pain and suffering, make hospital stays longer, and cost more to treat. Also, if someone gets hurt or loses something, the healthcare organization could be held legally responsible. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality says that between 700,000 and 1 million hospitalized patients fall each year.
There are a lot of things that can cause a patient to fall. Some of them are medicines, being in a place you don’t know, not having enough light, not having guard rails, and so on. Different things make it hard to find a single solution to the problem of falls that works well for everyone. However, nursing research plays a vital role in addressing these contributing factors. For instance, some evidence supports the effectiveness of purposed hourly rounding. Help can come from putting up guard rails, making sure the floors don’t slip, and writing in the right way. In addition to that, it is vital to screen all the patients for the risk of falls to assist with their management (Schwendimann et al., 2018). Undertaking all these measures will help a lot in improving patient outcomes. Fewer cases of patient fall will be reported, improving patient safety and outcome.
References
Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. (2022). https://psnet.ahrq.gov/primer/falls
Schwendimann, R., Bühler, H., De Geest, S., & Milisen, K. (2018). Falls and consequent injuries in hospitalized patients: effects of an interdisciplinary falls prevention program. BMC health services research, 6, 69. https://doi.org/10.1186/1472-6963-6-69
