CHAPTER 39: Clients with Medical Illnesses

In completing the case study, students will be addressing the following learning objectives:

Identify common medical conditions that can have accompanying psychiatric complications or symptoms. Describe general nursing implications for clients experiencing psychiatric disorders that are intertwined with other nonpsychiatric illnesses.

1. Carla, a 27-year-old white single mother of two preschool-age children, is in the psychiatric hospital for treatment of anxiety and depression. Carla has a cardiac condition that requires surgery. Carla is concerned over the financial cost of the surgery and caretakers for her children while she is in the hospital and undergoing rehabilitation. Carla is also worried that she may be unable to continue in her present employment as a salesperson due to the physical demands of this position. Carla’s case is representative of many patients with medical conditions who develop psychiatric symptoms.

(Learning Objectives: 1, 2)

a. What are some prevalent medical conditions that can also be accompanied by psychiatric symptoms or complications?

b.What are some nursing implications for Carla that address both the psychiatric and nonpsychiatric illnesses?

You must proofread your paper. But do not strictly rely on your computer’s spell-checker and grammar-checker; failure to do so indicates a lack of effort on your part and you can expect your grade to suffer accordingly. Papers with numerous misspelled words and grammatical mistakes will be penalized. Read over your paper – in silence and then aloud – before handing it in and make corrections as necessary. Often it is advantageous to have a friend proofread your paper for obvious errors. Handwritten corrections are preferable to uncorrected mistakes.

Use a standard 10 to 12 point (10 to 12 characters per inch) typeface. Smaller or compressed type and papers with small margins or single-spacing are hard to read. It is better to let your essay run over the recommended number of pages than to try to compress it into fewer pages.

Likewise, large type, large margins, large indentations, triple-spacing, increased leading (space between lines), increased kerning (space between letters), and any other such attempts at “padding” to increase the length of a paper are unacceptable, wasteful of trees, and will not fool your professor.

The paper must be neatly formatted, double-spaced with a one-inch margin on the top, bottom, and sides of each page. When submitting hard copy, be sure to use white paper and print out using dark ink. If it is hard to read your essay, it will also be hard to follow your argument.