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How Elimination Complexities Can Affect Lives of Patients Discussion

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Discuss how elimination complexities can affect the lives of patients and their families. Discuss the nurse's role in
supporting the patient's psychological and emotional needs. Provide an example.
Changes in bowel or bladder habits may be signs of illness, or they may cause illness. Continence is arguably the
biggest threat to individual dignity, and the ability to maintain bladder and bowel continence is an elemental part of
who we are. At the individual level, good continence care is vital and neglecting it can cause discomfort, distress
and can even be fatal. For example, inappropriate use of indwelling urethral catheters may cause catheter-associated
urinary tract infections, which can lead to septicemia and death.
Like good management of pain, good continence management involves combining a range of technical nursing
skills and qualities including compassion and empathy towards individual dignity and comfort needs. Nobody wants
to ask for help to use the toilet or likes being incontinent, so continence management demonstrates that the person is
seen and treated as important. Responding to requests for assistance sensitively and with respect and compassion for
the individual’s needs is often considered to be “just basic care” but getting it right consistently involves a level of
emotional intelligence. Toilet-related care is, by its nature, reactive and unpredictable, usually only happening when
a patient calls for assistance. Because such continence care needs tend to interrupt other planned activities, they are
often seen as a nuisance, which may explain why requests for assistance to use the toilet are ignored, or patients are
left on commodes or in the toilet for far too long.
References
Booth, J. (2013). Continence care is every nurse’s business. Nursing Times; 109: 17/18, 12-16. Retrieved from
https://www.nursingtimes.net/clinical-archive/continence/continence-care-is-every-nurses-business/5058805.article

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Discuss how elimination complexities can affect the lives of patients and their families. Discuss the nurse's role in supporting the patient's psychological and emotional needs. Provide an example. Changes in bowel or bladder habits may be signs of illness, or they may cause illness. Continence is ...
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