hello i am writing a developmental paper about a a one year old child who was born with tetrology of fallot. the infant has recently had her second surgery for repair of the defect, and is hospitalized in the picu. the child develops congestive heart failure while in the unit; she also develops an irregular heartbeat (atrial fibrillation). she is the second child in the family; the parents have a healthy three year old.

question: what would be an appropriate gordon functional health pattern for this infant.

marjory gordon was the first president of nanda. the division of the nanda taxonomy is based upon her 11 functional health patterns although it has been slightly tweaked in the years since. she developed the concept of the functional health patterns as a method to assess the patient prior to determining the patient's nursing problems. the nursing diagnoses are the shortened labels of nursing problems. assessment is designed to reveal the symptoms, or abnormal data, a patient has. it is that abnormal data (symptoms) that serves as proof, or evidence, to support the choice of a nursing diagnosis you use. every nursing diagnosis has a list of defining characteristics (symptoms)

your question: what would be an appropriate gordon functional health pattern for this infant? i don't know, and neither will anyone else that understands what this is all about. you need to perform a complete assessment of the 11 functional health needs on this patient in order to determine which one would be an appropriate one that establishes a nursing problem for which you can develop nursing interventions. this is just a specific assessment technique your school wants you to use to collect data prior to determining the patient's problem. you still need to follow the steps of the nursing process here. those steps are:

1. assessment (collect data based on gordon's 11 functional health needs, look up information about your patient's medical diseases/conditions to learn about the signs and symptoms and pathophysiology, look up information about the normal developmental stages of children and assess your one year old's accomplishments against that)
   
2. determination of the patient's problem(s)/nursing diagnosis (make a list of the abnormal assessment data, match your abnormal assessment data to likely nursing diagnoses, decide on the nursing diagnoses to use)
   
3. planning (write measurable goals/outcomes and nursing interventions)
   
4. implementation (initiate the care plan)
   
5. evaluation (determine if goals/outcomes have been met)

here are links to sites that have some information of what to ask in doing the assessment of the various categories of need:

• http://instructors.butlercc.edu/nr105/tgreen/tgnpg11healthpatterns.htm
  
• http://home.hiwaay.net/~theholt1/nurs1100/class5.htm#gordon's%2011%20functional%20patterns