Final answer:
The nursing process is a systematic, step-by-step approach to patient care that helps nurses address patient discomfort, adhere to treatment protocols, and make informed decisions within their scope of practice. This collaborative method ensures comprehensive and patient-centered care, involving detailed checklists and confirmation of critical information.
Step-by-step explanation:
The nursing process is a step-by-step approach to patient care used by nurses. This systematic method includes assessing, diagnosing, planning, implementing, and evaluating care. When a nurse uses the nursing process, they:
- Help reduce obvious signs of discomfort by assessing the patient and addressing their immediate needs.
- Help the patient adhere to the physician's treatment protocol by planning and implementing care based on the physician's orders and the nursing assessment.
- Approach the patient's disorder in a step-by-step method, ensuring that care is comprehensive, evidence-based, and patient-centered.
- Make significant nursing care decisions involving patient care within their scope of practice, often in collaboration with other healthcare professionals.
Through this method, each healthcare provider, including nurses, surgeons, and anesthesia professionals, play crucial roles. This organization is important for the care and recovery of the patient. Nurses focus on several tasks under the direct supervision of a registered nurse, including monitoring the dialysis process, assessing patient conditions, ensuring sterile procedures, and reviewing critical information with the team.
Detailed preoperative and postoperative checklists are used to ensure that all team members are on the same page regarding the patient's care plan. These checklists include confirming team member roles, patient identity, and procedural specifics such as the surgical site. They also address critical issues such as drug selection, equipment availability, and the anticipation of any critical events during the surgery.