Question

You have overheard a group of nursing students discussing their clinical experience. You overhear one say, "As nurses, we spend every day as part of our routine assessments asking patients if they have moved their bowels today. How do we let the patient know that we are not asking just for the sake of asking?" Ilustrate how a student can explain the concepts of gastrointestinal function that are important for patients and families to understand.

Answer 1

A student should understand the importance of it first inorder to explain it to the patient and his or her family members.

Whenever a student takes a patient for providing comprehensive care he or she should always start by identifying the patient, his or her family memebers, their method of interaction and the way of understanding. Then, she should explain any of the procedures or diagnosis what the patient and family memebers don't understand from the physician. She should always explain to them about the normal and abnormal process that is happening in Han body.

She should explain about how a person should always pass motion or stool everyday inorder to suggest that his body is functioning well and better. She should tell them that untill her bowel are passed properly the patient is getting proper nutrition in the body and the body is functioning well to throw out the waste from it. She should also explain that the emptying of the bowel will indicate the signs and symptoms which may be of different disease conditions like the colour change, odour, form of the stool etc. If a patient is constipating then it might be a natural process or it may be because of some bodily distinction or might be because of any medicinal malfunctions etc. She can explain that if the patient will have difficulty in passing bowel then it might lead to various conditions such as hemorrhoids, scarring of the intestinal wall, rupture of the rectal wall etc.