Nursing the recumbent patient

There are various ways that patients can become recumbent whether it is following a surgical procedure, trauma, sepsis, or even osteoarthritis in a geriatric patient, the nursing care for these patients will be similar.

As every patient is unique the nursing care should also be unique for that patient. It is important to take a holistic approach when prescribing nursing care. While two patients may have the same condition they may cope with the condition differently thus the level of nursing care they require can vary greatly (Jeffery, 2011). It is because of this that a standardised care plan cannot be made for each condition to use as a template as this would not consider all the needs of the patient as an individual. Two patients with similar presenting signs could need different levels of nursing care; for example, two patients being medically managed for spinal disc herniation will require different levels of analgesia, bladder management and physiotherapy depending on the individual's pain threshold, bladder control and its ambulatory status. Roper et al (2002) initially created the care plan model for use in human nursing after research conducted in 1976 which moved nursing care away from a disease-oriented approach to individual care, with a patient orientated approach that is still as relevant today as it was when it was first created (Davis, 2007). The model is based on the patient's 12 activities of daily living (maintaining a safe environment, communicating, breathing, eating and drinking, eliminating, personal grooming, controlling body temperature, mobilising, working and playing, expressing sexuality, sleeping, dying) and considers how dependent/independent the patient is so that nursing interventions can then be implemented accordingly (Jeffery, 2011).