Care and Management of a Patient with Complex Health Needs

Explore a high-quality nursing coursework sample focusing on complex care needs for TBI and colorectal cancer patients.

Assessment(s) Category Type Scope
1 Coursework Essay 2750 Words

Create an evidence informed discussion that explores the care and management of a patient with complex health needs, that also explores the epidemiology of illness.

You will address this assessment by choosing to focus on one of the two case studies presented in this module: either Chesney (Traumatic Brain Injury) or Sarah (Colo-rectal Cancer).

Your discussion must cover the following areas.

  1. Critically explore the epidemiology of the condition affecting the chosen case study and its significance for that individual and wider society.
  2. Using a range of relevant bio-scientific knowledge (such as physiology, pathophysiology, and pharmacology), evaluate the results from one clinical assessment or one clinical investigation from the case study and offer an evidenced-based rationale for a recommendation for care.  
  3. Explore and evaluate the ongoing evidence-informed care and management of one aspect of the complex health needs of your chosen case study.
  4. Within your discussion evaluate your role as the qualified nurse in the coordination of evidence-informed care for Sarah/Chesney within the interdisciplinary context. What factors may you need to consider when coordinating complex care across a range of settings?

Answer

The following is a sample answer discussing the care and management of Chesney, a patient with Traumatic Brain Injury.

Introduction

According to Chesney, in Traumatic Brain Injury, Glycylation is a common change that happens after translation. It includes attaching sugar molecules covalently to proteins, lipids, or other organic compounds. This change is necessary for many proteins, especially virus proteins, to fold correctly, stay stable, and work properly. In order to make themselves more stable, immune system-evading, and infectious, viruses often use the glycosylation machinery of target cells. The immune system’s main target is the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) coat glycoprotein (Env), which is necessary for the virus to live (Zhang et al., 2023).

Structure

This is very important for the HIV Env virus to be able to attack other cells: it has a messy structure. The first thing that is made of Env is a glycoprotein called gp160. It is then split into two parts, gp120 and gp41, as it grows up. Some of the most important parts of the gp120 subunit are on the outside. These include the CD4 receptor binding spots on the host cell surface. This is how the virus gets into host cells for the first time. To keep things going, the gp41 subunit helps the virus and host cell membranes join together as a transmembrane anchor. Nguyen et al. (2023) say this lets the virus core get into the host cell. The HIV-1 Env glycoprotein’s main job is to help the virus get into cells that it needs to infect. The glycoprotein changes shape in a number of ways when it binds to the CD4 receptor.