Adult nursing – Care Pathway

Order Description
Patient Pathways of Care in Adult Nursing I

Guidance notes for assessment
Type of Assessments:

– Case study – a case study drawn from concurrent clinical placement in which the stu-dent draws on the evidence base for practice in order to analyse the assessment and care planning process.

– Practice Assessment Document

Description of task

Task – 3000 word case study analysing the assessment and care planning process.

The student must:

? Select a patient pathway from current clinical placement experience.

? Justify the selection of the pathway with reference to national and local agendas.

? Analyse the assessment strategies utilised within the selected pathway from a bio-psycho-social perspective. This discussion should be underpinned by reference to contemporary evidence.

? Providing examples from practice, consider ways in which the assessment of the pa-tients on the pathway impacts upon the care planning process.
NB -Please remember to maintain confidentiality of your health trust & patient

The student should remember:

These guidance notes should be used in conjunction with the assessment specification found in your handbook & the assessment lecture slides .that you clearly cover

For this assignment you will need to ensure that you clearly cover all of the components identified in the assessment criteria.
What does `analyse` mean?

? Evaluate
? Examine
? Interpret
? Unpick
? Judge
? Critique
? Consider
? What are the consequences?
? Separate
? Think through
? How can I relate contemporary research to my case study?

Your work MUST be underpinned by relevant & contemporary research. By con-temporary this means try & use literature which is no more than 5 years old. There are certain circumstances when older literature can be used, when using the seminal work of an author, or where there is a lack of research in the field you are discussing.

You need to demonstrate that you have obtained literature from a range of sources i.e. books, journals or websites. You need to make the judgement whether these sources are credible & academic.
How many references do I use? I think it would be reasonable to say for a case study of this length approximately 20 references or more, would about right. 20 references would show evidence of wide reading on the assignment subject.
Assignment Structure
Introduction

First paragraph – include what you intended to include in this assignment – re- word the criteria presented in your handbook.

A definition of an integrated care, pathway.
Main body
You will need to cover all the components of your assignment.

Select a defined patient pathway from clinical placement area.

There are many to choose from as covered in the lecture sessions.

Justify the selection of this pathway with reference to national & local agen-das.
You need to discuss prevalence of this condition/ illness/ procedure in the population as a whole and tell the marker why this has relevance to your nursing practice. Also state the national agenda, this could be the NICE guidelines/pathway for this condition/illness/procedure and how this informs your local health trust on how they assess and care for patients with this condition/illness/procedure.

Now introduced your patient (this is a case study), give a brief account of the clinical scenario you are going to discuss.
Analyse the assessment strategies utilised within this selected pathway from a bio-psycho-social perspective. This discussion should be underpinned by refer-ence to contemporary evidence.
Chose 3 assessments from chosen pathway , one that illustrates a
biological assessment , one that illustrates a psychological assessment & one assessment that illustrates a social assessment. Give a rationale .

Why you chose this particular assessment & the relevance to your patient in your case study.

Try to include assessment tools, if you do not give a rationale for not in-cluding them. When you analyse the assessment process, you must un-derpinned this with relevant contemporary evidence.
Providing examples from practice, consider ways in which the assessment process of the patients on the pathway impacts upon the care planning proc-ess.
Tell the marker what was the result of your assessments?
How did this inform your nursing care?
How did this inform you care plan?
What would have been the consequence of you not assessing your patient as you did?
How do these assessments interrelate?
Again underpinned this section with relevant contemporary evidence.

Conclusion
For this part of your essay you will be summarising the main points of your case study, do not bring in here any new ideas, comments or research. This is not a lengthy section; a few lines will suffice here.

NB It is up to you whether you use sub-headings or not within your work. Please ensure you proof read your work, to make sure it flows well, is coherent and the grammar is correct. This guidance will be given to the markers of your case study.