Published Sep 14, 2008
michellehartl
1 Post
I am working on an assignment for a theory class and can not identify a teaching plan for a patient with renal failure and prioritizing nursing teaching interventions. Can someone please help me. Thanks
Daytonite, BSN, RN
1 Article; 14,604 Posts
renal failure is a broad topic. the first thing you need to do is read about renal failure yourself and narrow the subject. determine what you might think is something that would be important for a patient to be taught. teaching patients generally focuses on these kinds of concepts: the disease itself, prognosis, treatment, self-care. in your study of renal failure you are going to find that renal failure proceeds in stages, so if you want to teach about what causes the disease or how to recognize the symptoms then the stage of renal failure that the patient is in will be important to how you will prioritize the teaching interventions. renal failure is also a complication of diseases such as diabetes. that could be a factor affecting your teaching.
this sticky thread on allnurses contains weblinks you can use to investigate and learn about renal failure which is an associated goal of this assignment. you want to specifically look on the website of the national institute of diabetes and digestive and kidney diseases (a weblink is provided there) for any teaching materials they have on their website that you could use or examine to give you ideas for your own project. there is also a link on the sticky thread to a site called "kidney school" where you can learn, in simple language, all about renal failure that you can repeat or refer to a patient.
a patient teaching plan is organized like this:
generally, teaching plans are placed under a nursing diagnosis of deficient knowledge, specify [the "specify" is the detailed subject you are teaching, i.e. deficient knowledge, disease process, deficient knowledge, wound care]or ineffective health maintenance unless your instructors have given you other specific instructions.
good luck with this assignment. i worked on a medical renal unit. this is a interesting condition. our federal government is involved in the treatment of end stage renal failure because of the devastating expense of its treatment. one culture refers to it as "rich man's disease".