Health Prevention Strategies

Primary Prevention

• Promotes health and prevents disease/injury.
• Examples include immunization clinics, family planning, poison control information, accident prevention education, and teaching about healthy diets, exercise, seat belts, and safe sex.

Secondary Prevention

• Focuses on early detection, diagnosis, and treatment of disease.
• Aims to identify illness, reverse severity, provide cure, and return to optimal health.

Tertiary Prevention

• Begins after illness diagnosis and treatment.
• Aims to reduce disability and aid rehabilitation for maximum functioning.

Communication Considerations for Diverse Patients

• Physically impaired: Utilize augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) strategies.
• Eye blinks/hand squeezes: Can signal yes or no.
• Mentally challenged: Maintain eye contact, provide a quiet environment, use simple terms, ask closed-ended questions, be patient, and repeat yourself.
• Unconscious patients: Assume they can hear you, speak before touching, keep the environment quiet.
• Visually impaired: Acknowledge presence, identify yourself, explain touches, and indicate when the conversation ends.
• Foreign language speakers: Employ a medical interpreter, use a dictionary, and speak in simple terms.

Types of Communication

• Interpersonal communication: Between two or more people, exchanging messages.
• Intrapersonal communication: Self-talk.

Nurse-Patient Relationship

• Orientation phase: Roles are clarified, and agreement on relationship established.
• Patient orientation: Provides information about the healthcare facility, services, admission routines, and any other relevant patient comfort factors.
• Foundation: The strong relationship fosters self-awareness, empathy, and confidence.
• Facilitating assessment: Nurses can enhance focus, empathy, and clinical reasoning during the assessment process, leading to better care quality.
• Supportive assessment environment: Nurses create a supportive environment guaranteeing accurate data collection and trust.

Barriers to Communication

• Developmental level
• Sociocultural differences
• Roles and responsibilities
• Space and territoriality
• Physical, mental, and emotional state
• Values
• Environment

Question Types

• Closed-ended questions: Require yes/no responses, gathering specific information.
• Open-ended questions: Encourage detailed responses, exploring patient concerns.

Types of Illness

• Acute illness: Rapid onset, short duration (appendicitis, pneumonia, diarrhea, common cold).
• Chronic illness: Slow onset, periods of remission and exacerbation (asthma, cancer, epilepsy, hypertension, arthritis).

Changes in Health

• Permanent change: Irreversible alterations.

Health Dimensions

• Emotional dimension: Identifying symptoms, how the mind affects the body, and the body's response to conditions (anxiety, depression, impulsive behavior, difficulty concentrating).
• Physical dimension: Symptoms related to genetics, age, developmental level, race, and gender (Down syndrome, color blindness, sickle cell anemia).

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

• Physiological needs: Essential for survival (hunger, thirst, elimination, reproduction, mobility).
• Safety and security needs: Physical and emotional safety.
• Self-actualization needs: Highest achievable level (full self-respect and comfort with others, problem-solving ability, interest pursuit).

Cultural Considerations in Nursing

• Cultural diversity: Meeting the religious needs of patients from different backgrounds.
• Ethnocentrism: Believing one's culture is superior.
• Culture: Shared values, beliefs, norms, and practices of a group, influencing health perceptions.
• Ethnicity: Sense of identification with a cultural group.

Prioritization

• A-B-C priority (nursing): Airway, breathing, circulation.

Holistic Nursing Care

• Adapting to new cultures, understanding individual adaptation.

Infection Control

• Agent: Cause infection (bacteria, fungi, viruses).
• Host: Living being where the agent resides.
• Environment: Physical surroundings, influencing microorganism spread and infection.
• Incubation period: Time between invasion and symptom onset (organism growth).
• Prodromal stage: Early signs/symptoms, most infectious.
• Full (acute) stage: Infection-specific signs/symptoms, determining illness severity.
• Convalescent period: Recovery, potential health changes.

Asepsis

• Surgical asepsis: Used for non-surgical procedures like catheter insertion, dressing changes, and injectable medication preparation.

Immunosuppressed Patients

• Issue: Can become infected by their own organisms.
• Healthcare recommendations: Ensure provider health, restrict visits from those with contagious illnesses, avoid standing water, follow hospital protocols.
• Patient recommendations: Frequent handwashing, disinfectants, avoid sharing items, crowds, injuries, sick individuals; cook and properly store food.

Blood Pressure Measurement

• Cuff sizing: Bladder length 75-100% and width 37-50% (2:1 ratio, 1-2 fingers fit inside arm).
• Cuff too wide: Low reading.
• Cuff too narrow: High reading.

Pulse

• Pulse rate: Number of pulsations per minute.
• Pulse rhythm: Pattern of beats.
• Pulse amplitude: Quality, indicating blood volume and left ventricular strength.

Temperature Measurement

• Most accurate: Rectal.
• Least accurate: Axillary (armpit).

Fire Safety

• RACE protocol: Rescue, Activate, Confine, Evacuate.