Question

Case study: Emma is an 85-year-old white female who was recently widowed. She lives independently in her small home in a large city. She is fairly active in her community; she likes to attend church, weekly exercise classes, and social outings with her friends. Recently, she has found little interest or joy in leaving her home; this began after a bout of the flu where she was hospitalized for 3 days. She was happy enough with her medical care and was glad to be feeling well enough to return home. However, she finds she has little energy to manage her home, let alone socialize with friends. Her visiting nurse asks her often about her mood, appetite, and sleep patterns. Emma is vague with her responses and says she’s “fine.” The nurse requests a social worker to speak with Emma to see if any community services would help her recover and get back to her former routine. Additionally, home health-based occupational and physical therapists visit the client at home to address her self-care and mobility needs. After evaluations are completed, the team discusses Emma’s care, and they are all concerned about possible depression and her self-perceived life satisfaction post-illness. Answer the following 4 questions, indicate each answer with the corresponding question number.

1. What are some assessments that can be completed with Emma to glean more information?
2. What factors are likely impacting her recovery?
3. Who should potentially be on Emma’s healthcare team, and why
4. What are some potential interventions the professionals can provide?

Answer 1

Some of the assessment which can be taken to glean more information are

• Psychological assessment:how she managed things when she was alone,any other medical problems
• Psychosocial assessment: assessing her interactions with friends, neighbors, strangers to know about her relationship with the society
• Spiritual assessment:to known her beliefs and practices
• Focused assessment:focus on the problems and their relation to the current health status

The factors which are impacting her recovery are

• Oldage
• Loneliness
• Weakness and fragility because of health condition, age
• Psychological depression being a widow

The most important professional to be involed in her care and provide them some potential intervention are

• Counselor or Psychologist:to help her aide to recover from the loneliness and provide emotional ,psychological support with therapy
• Nursing aide or Nursing attendant or CNA : to meet her medical needs at her home
• Support services groups: to engage her in the society actively and make new relationships, friends ,neighbors, etc.,