Nursing Students Student Assist
Published Jan 27, 2010
mello1177
27 Posts
I have no idea how to do a case study. I can answer case study questions, but not a case study. I was told to do a case study on my patient and when I asked how to do that I was told I should know. Maybe I should but I am not sure how. From what I have gathered it seems like a care plan essay typr of paper except that the guide says to develope questions to stimulate critical thought. I am confused!!!
any suggestions of sites to look at or if you just know what to do can you explain PLEASE
Boog'sCRRN246, RN
784 Posts
I have to do a case study on a patient at the end of my program, before graduation, and it's going to be a huge undertaking. Ours is a complete history and physical assessment, nutritional assessment, discharge planning (even if the patient happens to become deceased), and several other things that are escaping me at the moment. Not sure what kind of case study you've been assigned. I would press the teacher for more details and talk to people in your class if you really don't know.
Daytonite, BSN, RN
1 Article; 14,604 Posts
a case study is pretty much constructed in an essay form. it is merely a discussion of the patient and their nursing problems--it's an expanded care plan. follow the steps of the nursing process to organize the paper. steps #1 and #2 will be the largest part of the paper. step #3 will be the goal and nursing interventions. assessment will be big because it involves how you will be coming to the decision of what the patient's nursing problems are (what the abnormal data is) as well as a little discussion of their medical condition. this website, although for doctors, can help you organize your initial assessment and lab data:
http://depts.washington.edu/medclerk/student/presentation.html - format for writing the case study (docs have to present written case studies during their internship and residency all the time). you can use this as a kind of guide to organize as well:
[*]reviewing the signs, symptoms and side effects of the medications/treatments that have been ordered and that the patient is taking
[*]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). it helps to have a book with nursing diagnosis reference information in it. there are a number of ways to acquire this information.
[*]always sequence actual nursing problems before potential (risk for) or anticipated problems
[*]planning (write measurable goals/outcomes and nursing interventions)
[*]how to write goal statements: see post #157 on thread https://allnurses.com/general-nursing-student/careplans-help-please-121128.html
[*]interventions are of four types
[*]care/perform/provide/assist (performing actual patient care)
[*]teach/educate/instruct/supervise (educating patient or caregiver)
[*]manage/refer/contact/notify (managing the care on behalf of the patient or caregiver)
[*]implementation (initiate the care plan)
[*]evaluation (determine if goals/outcomes have been met) - this is an assessment. you will specifically look for the defining characteristics that supported your nursing diagnoses to see if, or how, they have changed (improved, stabilized or gotten worse) as well as for the evidence of any new nursing problems.
while you will focus a bit on the medical condition in the assessment portion of the paper, be very sure you hit the nursing problems. in the assessment part of the outline above i list out what we nurses assess. it is a bit different than the testing that docs do although you should mention how the docs diagnose whatever medical condition your patient in the paper will have. we, as nurses, primarily focus on how the patient responds to their medical condition and what we do for it. that should be a very major part of the remainder of your paper.
thank you soooo much