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Nurses General Nursing

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I'm writing an essay and im REEEAAALLYYY struggling with my intro. I basically need to sum up why nursing is related to elements (oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, phosphorus, calcium, and carbon) and why they need to study chemistry.

PLEASEEE HELP!!:specs:

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Specializes in thoracic, cardiology, ICU.

Well a big focus of icu nursing is proper gas exchange and acid base balance (having people on vents and even CVVH. there's a practical example for you. we monitor blood gases which tell us the blood pH, pCO2 and pO2 and bicarbonate. we can assess serum CO2 as a measure for bicarb mostly for renal studies to assess kidney function. I guess we work with those elements daily daily whether its replenishing electrolytes or monitoring blood gases, so we need to be aware of chemical reactions that take place and how they affect the body. When you get into pathophysiology that becomes pretty important too. Hope that directs you in some helpful direction ;)

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Nursing is one of the many careers in which chemistry is vitally important. Chemistry examines the properties and composition of matter and the interactions between substances. The human body itself contains substances called elements. These elements are what makes up the entire physical structure of a human organism. The human body contains 26 different elements. Of these elements, only 6 make up 99% of the human body mass. The 6 main elements in the body are Oxygen, Carbon, Hydrogen, Nitrogen, Calcium, and Phosphorus. Understanding how these elements function within the human body is necessary in the nursing career because nurses need to care for and perform their formal education and training on their patients and monitor them to assure that they are in a healthy and stable condition.

How does that sound for an intro?... any thing you would add or take out?

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I love chemistry. I am not very good at it but I love it. I am amazed at the way it applies to my everyday life as well as medicine. One subject that comes to mind right away is chelation therapy. If you have someone with metal poisoning such as lead or mercury then how do you get it out of their body? Someone figured out that you need to introduce chemicals to the body, without killing the patient, that would bind with the metals and carry those metals out of the system. That's very applicable to us. Sorry I can't explain that in a more scientific manner, but you can probably figure it out.

Another example that comes to mind is the application of hyperbaric therapy. This involves oxygen to aid those who have had diving accidents, burns, carbon manoxide poisoning.

Every medication we administer has been thoroughly designed from a chemical standpoint. Ex: There are only slight differences in codeine and synthetic codeine. Much thought goes in to how will chemical will interact with the body? What will these chemicals bind to? What is the theory behind glucose testing? What can our red blood cells tell us about our glucose? We can know the answers to these questions if we look at what chemically binds to our red blood cells. I could go on and on.

Dietary! How about considering your patients iron absorption. Would it help to give them orange juice with their iron supplements? How about calcium absorption? Do you give a patient milk with their iron pill? How do you maximize the nutrient absorption in your patients? Is anything they are eating going to hinder the treatment? Chemistry is everywhere. Hope this helps. Good luck.

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How does this apply to nursing? I think that nursing is more than cleanup and turning. Like erratic thinker stated they must monitor blood gases on their patients. You are the eyes, and ears. The doctor isn't standing by reading all of that info. You have to know when things are out of range so you will know if your patient is about to head south. You want to know why you don't use a cortisone on a rash that was caused by a steroid. If you don't know what cortisone is, chemically, you might not know that. How about instructing a patient about alcohol use when they are on antibiotic therapy? To me it is important to know why things work rather than regurgitating something that I memorized.

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Specializes in Med/Surg.
Nursing is one of the many careers in which chemistry is vitally important. Chemistry examines the properties and composition of matter and the interactions between substances. The human body itself contains substances called elements. These elements are what makes up the entire physical structure of a human organism. The human body contains 26 different elements. Of these elements, only 6 make up 99% of the human body mass. The 6 main elements in the body are Oxygen, Carbon, Hydrogen, Nitrogen, Calcium, and Phosphorus. Understanding how these elements function within the human body is necessary in the nursing career because nurses need to care for and perform their formal education and training on their patients and monitor them to assure that they are in a healthy and stable condition.

How does that sound for an intro?... any thing you would add or take out?

I would at least reword this...they're not really "performing their formal education" on anyone...it sounds awkward.

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Sorry I don't know how to write subscripts on here. But how about C6H12O6, glucose. There's carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen there. Essential for the life of every cell in your body.

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Specializes in LTC.

Have you gone past the intro of the paper? Have you looked at the elements and how they are apart of nursing.

When writing a paper I always leave the intro for last.

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Nursing is one of the many careers in which chemistry is vitally important. Chemistry examines the properties and composition of matter and the interactions between substances. The human body itself contains substances called elements. These elements are what makes up the entire physical structure of a human organism. The human body contains 26 different elements. Of these elements, only 6 make up 99% of the human body mass. The 6 main elements in the body are Oxygen, Carbon, Hydrogen, Nitrogen, Calcium, and Phosphorus. Understanding how these elements function within the human body is necessary in the nursing career because nurses deal with these elements on a day to day basis with every patient and they analyze what kinds of medications are needed to prescribe and how many dosages patients require.

BETTER?

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yea i have looked a little past it... i looked at what these elements do in the body and where they are located. thats basically it... im just stuck on the intro.. i havnt gone any farther. its kinda frustrating

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Specializes in LTC.

Skip the intro for now and find out about the elements and what they do in the body and how they are related to nursing. Once you have the body of your paper sumarize it into an intro.

Intros are the readers peepshow of the entire paper. If you don't know what is to come yet it's a bit silly to write the quick overview/summary of the paper.

What you do have sounds really good though.

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Like casi said. Do the intro last.

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