Nursing Interventions For A Patient With Anxiety And Suicidal Thoughts

Identifying Urgent Risk Areas

1. a) The patient has been feeling insomnia, anxiety and sleeplessness for the past six weeks. He has lost 5 kilos and his appetite.  The patient projects a low image about himself. He feels that he is incompetent both in professional as well as personal life. The patient seems to feel that he has let down his wife and his daughter. Mr. Chung spends his days feeling low and tearful. The decision making capacity of the patient is impaired, so he can possibly choose to end his own life to solve his issues. Suicide is the act of intentionally ending one’s life (Cho & Hong, 2001). So, it can be concluded that he is a suicidal risk.

1.b) The nurse should be supportive of the defenses of the patient in the beginning so that the patient can fight his thoughts. The nurse should listen to the patient and be kind and gentle.

The nurse will have to handle the patient Mr. Chung and the family as well in order to facilitate the complete recovery of the patient. The coordination and the support of the patient’s family are very essential in treating these conditions (Hwang et al.,2004). The nurse should make sure that the patient is spending enough time with his wife and his daughter so that he feels at peace and secure. The patient should not be left alone or made to feel lonely.

2.a) Mr. Chung is suffering from several symptoms such as feeling anxious, palpitations, breathlessness, and insomnia and so on. The patient has also lost 5 kilos in six weeks. He has also lost his normal appetite. All these symptoms add up to a condition of known as anxiety attacks (Smalbrugge et al., 2006). The anxiety attacks are random attacks, which make the patient feel the shortness of breath, dizziness, trembling and so on. The patient has been recently subjected to a lot of undue stress that has caused a high level of anxiety in him.

2. b) The various interventions, which the nurse has to take are:

• The nurse should be present with the patient always and especially during the time when his anxiety levels are high. The nurse should be calm although the patient is hyperactive.
• Whenever the patient becomes hyperactive to any situation, the nurse should shift him to a quieter environment (Sanson et al., 2018).

Rationale: The nurse should make the patient feel secure. The nurse should make the patient aware of the situations when his overacting and should always try to keep the patient calm (Grov et al., 2005).  Mr. Chung has a risk of a drug overdose so the nurse should limit the access of the patient to any kind of drugs, that would decrease the suicidal thoughts (Shin et al.,2015).

Nursing Interventions for Risk Area

3. The two ethical, legal or professional issues, which the nurse might face, are as follows:

The family might interfere with the treatment processes of the nurse and might try to manipulate and direct her according to their convenience . This is a common professional issue that the nurses face while treating their patients (Pereira et al.,2016).

The relatives and the visitors of the client might request some information regarding the condition of the patient. The nurses are forbidden to share any information about the condition of the patient except the immediate family of the patient (Eo et al.,2015).Therefore, this is another legal issue, which the nurses face while treating anxiety patients.

References

Cho, M. J., & Hong, M. S. (2001). A study on the effect of supportive nursing care to anxiety reduction of the patient immediately before surgery in the operating room. Journal of Korean Academy of Adult Nursing, 13(4), 632-640.

Smalbrugge, M., Pot, A. M., Jongenelis, L., Gundy, C. M., Beekman, A. T., & Eefsting, J. A. (2006). The impact of depression and anxiety on well being, disability and use of health care services in nursing home patients. International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, 21(4), 325-332.

Hwang, Y. J., Park, Y. H., Park, I. S., Kim, N. Y., Kim, J. M., & Kim, J. Y. (2004). The effects of nursing education using CD ROM on the anxiety and knowledge of patients having minor surgery. Journal of Korean Academy of Adult Nursing, 16(1), 82-89.

Sanson, G., Perrone, A., Fascì, A., & D’agostino, F. (2018). Prevalence, Defining Characteristics, and Related Factors of the Nursing Diagnosis of Anxiety in Hospitalized Medical?Surgical Patients. Journal of Nursing Scholarship, 50(2), 181-190.

Pereira, L., Figueiredo-Braga, M., & Carvalho, I. P. (2016). Preoperative anxiety in ambulatory surgery: The impact of an empathic patient-centered approach on psychological and clinical outcomes. Patient education and counseling, 99(5), 733-738.

Eo, Y. S., Lee, N. Y., Lee, J. W., & Cha, H. J. (2015). The Effects of Supportive Nursing Intervention Using Video-Program of Operating Room Nurses before Operation on Laparoscopic Hysterectomy Patients Anxiety. Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial Cooperation Society, 16(4), 2639-2646.

Shin, S., Park, J. H., & Kim, J. H. (2015). Effectiveness of patient simulation in nursing education: meta-analysis. Nurse education today, 35(1), 176-182.

Grov, E. K., Dahl, A. A., Moum, T., & Fosså, S. D. (2005). Anxiety, depression, and quality of life in caregivers of patients with cancer in late palliative phase. Annals of oncology, 16(7), 1185-1191. Grov, E. K., Dahl, A. A., Moum, T., & Fosså, S. D. (2005). Anxiety, depression, and quality of life in caregivers of patients with cancer in late palliative phase. Annals of oncology, 16(7), 1185-1191.