need help with care of child with cardites

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My professor has "cardites" un the blue print for peds final. She told us to read on our own. I know about the meds, medical tx and and S+S, but I don't

know about nursing care. Ex, bed rest, nutrition, etc.

Would apreciate any help.

Lori

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Specializes in Day Surgery/Infusion/ED.

When a professor tells you to "read on your own," I hardly doubt he/she means for you to ask people to do your homework for you. It used to mean actually doing your own research, not just posting on a BB and asking people to give you the answers.

Critical thinking skills, critical thinking skills...You're not going to be able to do this when you take NCLEX. Somewhere along the line you are going to have to learn how to put all the pieces together.

Frankly, I think it is unethical for you to ask people to help you with the answers to your final.

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Specializes in Day Surgery/Infusion/ED.

Also, you shouldn't list in your profile that you're an RN-ASN when you are not.

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Specializes in ORTHOPAEDICS-CERTIFIED SINCE 89.

I am not familiar with the term cardites.

You may want to post on the student nurses forum for some help, but we do encourage our members to do their own work.

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Specializes in med/surg, telemetry, IV therapy, mgmt.

hi, lori. . .i'm assuming you are talking about carditis, correct? as in the inflammation of the pericardium, myocardium or endocardium of the heart. nursing care (nursing interventions) are developed from the signs and symptoms of the disease state the patient exhibits. this goes to the very basis of the nursing process. in the nursing process you assess the patient for any problems they might be experiencing. when you are given a question like this, you have to look at the same signs and symptoms that the doctor would also see. in addition, your instructor will also want you to take into account age appropriate behavior you might expect children at various ages to exhibit that would indicate the presence of some of these signs and symptoms. remember that one of the differences in working with children is that they cannot accurately articulate their subjective symptoms, so your powers of observation have to look for things you might expect to be there.

think about how you would develop a nursing care plan. you would take the symptoms your patient is having and you would list out nursing interventions for each of those symptoms. so, for a patient with carditis, let's suppose that one of your symptoms is fever. think about the nursing interventions you will take for a pediatric patient with a fever. how will you accomplish taking a temperature in a newborn? or, a 2 year old? or, a 5 year old? how often would you take the temperature? do you want to encourage fluids? do you want to take blankets off the bed? think about the temperature regulation ability of a child's body. at what point do you make the decision to call the doctor and notify of an elevated temp? what labwork related to a fever should you be monitoring? what teaching needs to be done with the parents? all of these are the nursing care for a child with a fever.

suppose another of your symptoms is chest pain. first of all, do you understand what is causing the pain? how would you assess chest pain in a child? what measures can you take to relieve the pain, do you think? would you try to restrict the patient's activity?

if the patient is having a productive cough, since carditis is sometimes associated with pneumonia, you'll want to position the patient to optimize their respirations, encourage coughing, and if they are old enough encourage them to participate in deep breathing and coughing activity. what about oral care? what if a baby needs oxygen? how can that be accomplished?

are you getting the idea here of how to determine the nursing care? it all rests on the symptoms the patient will have. my recommendation is that you go back through all the signs and symptoms that you said you knew about in your post. make a list of them. and, one by one address the nursing interventions for each of them. if you have a nursing care plan book you can use that to assist you with many of these. your basic nursing fundamentals book should also have nursing interventions listed for each of these problems. use the index in the back of your book to help you find them. i'm listing some articles from emedicine on the three types of pediatric carditis for you to browse through. you can also develop a good list of signs and symptoms from these articles as well.

emedicine - endocarditis, bacterial : article by brian keith eble, md - bacterial endocarditis [in the pediatric patient]

emedicine - myocarditis, nonviral : article by stuart berger, md - nonviral myocarditis [in the pediatric patient]

emedicine - myocarditis, viral : article by edwin rodríguez, md - vital myocarditis [in the pediatric patient]

emedicine - pericarditis, bacterial : article by john berger, md - bacterial endocarditis [in the pediatric patient]

if you still are having difficulty with this assignment, don't hesitate to post more questions. i will watch for them. also, you should check out the nursing student forums on allnurses. you are more likely to get help from the other nursing students if you post questions there. here are links:

good luck with this assignment!

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