No. 6 To facilitate
the maintenance of nutrition of all body cells
By: Jan - Michael Moscoso
Basically, she developed the patient-centered
approach to nursing and was developed inductively from her own
practice. It is considered a human needs theory. The theory was created to
assist with nursing education and is most applicable to the education of nurses.
She categorized nursing problems based on the individual's needs and developed
a typology of nursing treatment and nursing skills. She developed a list of
characteristics that described what was distinctly nursing, differentiating the
profession from other health professions. The model defines 21 nursing
problems, 20 steps to identifying client's problems and 20 nursing skills.
Abdellah’s typology of twenty one
nursing problems was an awakening call for revisions and amendments of the
nursing educational system in her era. Professors and educators realized the
importance of client centered care
rather than focusing on medical interventions. Nursing education then
slowly deviated its concentration from the complex, medical concepts, into
exercising better attention to the client as the primary concern.
The
6th nursing problem – to
facilitate the maintenance of nutrition of all body cells is a very basic
concern of a nurse. Apart from medical interventions, dietary adjustments
relative to patient conditions is also an important thing to consider.
Adherence to the changes in diet is important for the full recovery of the
patient and also works as adjuncts to pharmacologic regimen so it is important
for nurses to be able to fully explain the purpose of special diets to gain the patient’s
cooperation.
I
remember when I was still a student nurse; I had this one patient who also
happens to be my uncle. Now my uncle, he’s a diabetic and he loves to eat.
However, he’s very picky with his food. During his hospitalization, he wouldn’t
eat hospital food. At that time, he had a scheduled operation for I and D
because of a diabetic foot. As expected, prior to surgery he was instructed not
to have any fluids and food (NPO). However, there were many people who visited
my uncle and it was constantly a pain when people would bring him food and we
were already informing them not do so. We couldn’t track all of them because he
would just call someone to bring him some snickers or something and we would
just find empty wrappers of chocolate bars. The floor nurses weren’t doing
anything about it. It was so frustrating. Looking back at this scenario, I
think nurses need to read up and refresh their knowledge on nutrition because
it plays a very important factor for the health of the patient. We, nurses have
a critical role in the nutritional health of the patient. It is important to make
observations related to consumption of food and the patient’s ability to
prepare and eat food and to monitor and teach good dietary habits. Some of the
prescribed special diets may not be that palatable and sudden shifts from the
patient’s accustomed food preferences make adherence difficult. Also the
patient’s state of illness affects the patient’s ability and appetite to eat.
Nurses should take these factors into consideration and perform interventions
before, during and after providing meals in order to optimize the patient’s
nutritional needs. I also believe that we should stress on the proper health
education of our patients regarding nutrition because good nutrition can
actually prevent a lot of diseases that we have today.
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