You have to write a report on a clinical care scenario that involves clinical decision making.
Consider any clinical placements recent or one that you can remember. Think of an episode of care that was undertaken. This does not have to be good or bad. Please avoid anything that may be personal, emotive or considered poor practice and needs escalating. We are using this as an opportunity to learn why something happened in a particular way or why it may be best for it to be undertaken differently.
The clinical care scenario care will provide the framework for the report and the critical discussions and therefore ensure that it has sufficient content to be able to explore, and not too much that it is hard to cover.
Tasks to undertake in order to write the report:
- Identify an episode of care. Write down the details.
- Consider the clinical decisions made and the processes involved getting to that decision. By doing this you may uncover elements that you will explore within your clinical care scenario. For instance, experience, ethical or professional aspects may influence the decision-making process.
- Write down the key clinical decisions made. Break these down so that they can be explored. You may not choose to write all of these down. Focus on the important aspects
The report has to cover the following aspects
- A brief summary of the clinical decisions made.
- A discussion of the pathophysiology and pharmacology relevant to the episode of care
- The importance of person-centred care and involving patients in their decisions around the planning and implementation of their care.
- Discuss the relevance of health policy in relation to the episode of care.
- Critical discussion and evidence to support or refute the decisions that were made
- Evaluating the effect of the decision
Included in the report there must be consideration towards:
Ethical issues and professionalism.
Systematic approaches to care, for instance the Nursing process.
There must be critical discussion and evidence to support your writing from a wide range of sources.
Word count 2500+/- 10%
The scenario needs to have the following elements:
- It needs to have a clear decision-making process.
- You need to be able to discuss pathophysiology that is directly linked to the case stud
- You need to discuss pharmacology that is directly linked to the case study.
- Is the patient or care involved in the decision-making process? If not, should they have been? It maybe that they were not. That is fine. Discuss the importance of involving (or not) the patient in the decision-making process. Or look at it from a patient centred care perspective.
- Is there any guidelines or policy that could guide management of the patient?
- Will I be able to find evidence to back up the decision making process?
Writing your report:
- The decision-making process. Look at how you can explore the decisions made. It may be useful to draw out the stages and the influencing factors.
2. The pathophysiology needs to be the linked to the case study. You may wish to include:
i. Aetiology (cause),
ii. Risk factors
iii. The physiology influenced by the disease or illness.
iv. Signs and symptoms
Everyone will be different so they may not all require all of these elements. Read around the subject and look at various textbooks. Reference this.
2b The pharmacology around how the drug work. Reference this.
3 Service user or patient centred care.
Consider the service user perspective. How does this differ from your perspective?
Consider your goal. What is the patient’s goal?
You may also consider patient centred care. For instance, a patient is receiving morphine. You are aware that constipation is caused from morphine. You enquire with the patient about their bowel habits and suggest that a laxative may be a useful adjunct to their stay (preventing harm).
4 Guidelines or policy
What is the difference between policy and guidelines? For your topic, what guidelines are out there? It is always useful to look at NICE. Are there any alternative guidelines? Consider professional bodies that may have their own specific guidance.
How does this differ to NICE? Is a policy best suited to your topic area? If so, why?
Be critical. Your evidence may sit alongside the guideline. If it does not say so and discuss.
5. Evidence
The evidence has to be from research articles. Not www.nhs.uk or Healthline
| Report into the clinical decisions made and the rationale and evidence supporting or refuting these clinical decisions. | |||||
| Date | |||||
| Clinical care scenario concerning… (note all names, places of work have been changed to protect patient confidentiality) | |||||
| This report is about the clinical care scenario found in appendix 1. Please refer to this for information regarding the nature and the issues discussed in the report. | |||||
| 1. | Identify the key clinical decisions made that are relevant to this clinical care scenario of care and will be explored further within this report. You may choose to frame this section in context of a suitable decision-making model. Include here any ethical or professional issues. | ||||
| 2. | Explore the relevant pathophysiology and pharmacology relevant to this clinical care scenario. Include in the appendix your clinical care scenario and an outline of your report (bullet points) | ||||
| 3. 4. 5. | In this section. In relation to the clinical decisions made; critically discuss the evidence supporting or refuting these decisions, discuss the relevance of patient centred care and the importance (or not) of the patient’s involvement in their care and consider how relevant health policy shapes or guidelines informs decisions. | ||||
| 6 | In respect of the findings in the report; evaluate the care given and how the evidence supporting or refuting the clinical decisions made will impact on future practice. | ||||
Appendix 1: Clinical Care Scenario
Appendix 2: References and bibliography. 60 references last 5 years. No old reference pls
