Nursing Process

The community health RN is caring for a family with a child who has significant developmental delays. The child is 9-years-old and exhibits the development of a 6-month old infant.  She can move her extremities spontaneously, hold her head up and cry out occasionally. She has a gastrostomy tube for her medications and she receives continuous tube feeding via pump.  She was discharged 2 days ago after a 5-day hospitalization for failure to thrive.  During the hospital stay, the child’s tube feeding formula was adjusted to meet her growing needs. The community health RN is monitoring the child after discharge, following up on the child’s weight and the parent’s knowledge of the new feeding formula type, amount, and schedule. Today the child weighs 64 pounds. The child’s current weight represents a 2 pound weight gain since hospital admission.

The RN has chosen the NANDA-I nursing diagnosis of Ineffective health management r/t insufficient knowledge of expected growth and calorie requirements AEB parent states, “I thought the same tube feeding would be enough calories for a long time, I don’t know how to tell if the feeding should be adjusted.”

Initial Discussion Post:

• Compare and contrast narrative documentation with SOAP/SOAPIE/SOAPIER- style documentation.
• Create a documentation entry to describe the community health nurse’s first visit based on this scenario using SOAP/ SOAPIE/SOAPIER-style documentation. Students may embellish the scenario with additional patient information or parent’s response to teaching if desired.