I work in an adult care center in California, and the greatest difficulty I encounter when working with patients, including this week, is communication problems. In particular, one patient I was working with received a mild injury, which caused bruising. However, he did not report this during the check-up nor communicated the cause of the injury, which was him feeling dizzy. This type of issue may be linked to the medication he takes or could be a sign of a more serious problem. One of the nurses saw the bruise and asked the patient what happened, yet he continued to refuse to discuss this problem. I find that communication and patients refusing to share some of the details about their health is a severe problem because it obstructs nurses from helping them. On the other hand, I understand that older adults do not want to burden others, which is a common stereotype about aging. Hence, they choose to avoid addressing some of their concerns, and this prompts me to pay particular attention to the smallest details.
Another problem I faced this week was the lack of resources to provide adequate care. Currently, this facility is understaffed, and most nurses work long-hour shifts to provide proper care. However, I find that these shifts are very exhausting, and the prolonged hours of work make it difficult to perform nurses’ duties with diligence due to tiredness. Heydari et al. (2019) report that resources are a common issue that most adult care facilities face in the United States. Hence, it is difficult to provide adequate care to older adults when the site is understaffed, and nurses feel extremely tired.
Reference
Heydari, A., Sharifi, M., & Moghaddam, A. B. (2019). Challenges and barriers to providing care to older adult patients in the intensive care unit: A qualitative research.Open Access Macedonian Journal of Medical Sciences, 7(21), 3682–3690. Web.