Aged Care Assignment: Case Analysis of Nicholas Connell

Question

Task: Case Study: Aged
Name: Nicholas Connell
Age: 68
Nicholas Connell is a 68 year-old male living with his 65 year-old wife Lina Connell and pet dog in their own home. Nicholas was recently diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. His symptoms include difficulty with walking, difficulty swallowing, loss of speech and reduction of motor skills, especially when holding cutlery. He is a high falls risk and aspiration risk.

His wife Lina finds it difficult to manage his needs. Nicholas and Lina used to be very active, walking their pet dog daily, meeting up with friends at the local church and attending bingo at the RSL club weekly. His GP has referred him to the ACAT team to ensure his needs are supported in his home environment. Nicholas and the team outlined the following goals: improve mobility and motor skills with assistive technology and home modifications, walking his pet dog, increase socialisation/communication by reconnecting with his church group and bingo nights.

Aged Care Assignment Instructions:
You are required to read the above case study and prepare a report on an individual client addressing the following sections:

INTRODUCTION
Overview of what the report contains/addresses
Include a rationale for the importance of the topic

Assessment & Funding Mechanism
Describe the relevant assessment and funding mechanism (who/how will they be assessed? What funding is available? Who provides it? What services might be appropriate? etc.)

Succinctly apply this to your chosen case study
Community Inclusion & Participation

Briefly describe importance (and/or benefits)
Apply to your case study – use specific examples. Ensure your examples are feasible, detailed and relevant to your selected client.

Empowering & Promoting Independence
Briefly describe importance (or benefits, or a definition).

Apply to your case study – use specific examples. Ensure your examples are feasible, detailed and relevant to your selected client. Consideration of each of the following is also required. They can be in separate paragraphs or integrated in the above.

Cultural Awareness & Diversity
Briefly define concepts.

Describe importance, key areas and characteristics
Briefly apply to your chosen case study – how will you support your client in this area?

Safe Work Practices
Briefly define and describe importance.
Apply to your case study – how will you ensure workplace safety in the specific examples you have described above?

Answer

Introduction
The following aged care assignment is going to emphasize upon aged care case study of Nicholas Connell. Nicholas Connell is a 68 year-old male living with his 65 year-old wife Lina Connell and pet dog in their own home. The individual has recently diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. He has reported with the key symptoms, including “difficulty with walking, difficulty swallowing, loss of speech and reduction of motor skills, especially when holding cutlery”. It has become difficult for his wife to manage his needs. It is crucial for Nicholas to restore his normal lifestyle, while dealing with his emerging difficulties. The assignment would focus upon assessing the patient’s community inclusion, empowerment, safe practice and required support. Along with the funding that can assist the family are also to be discussed.The rationale of the assignment is to understand the way Parkinson’s disease can be funded and the inclusions required for Nicholas so that the medical assessment of his condition can be undertaken and managed.

Assessment & Funding Mechanism
The patient Nicholas has been referred to the ACAT team by his GP, for assessing his needs and ensuring that these are supported in his home environment. Initially, the ACAT team would assess Nicholas’s needs overall, including financial, medical, social and mental needs. Assessing his needs, some key goals have been found, i.e. “to improve mobility and motor skills with assistive technology and home modifications”, “walking his pet dog”, “to increase socialisation/communication by reconnecting with his church group and bingo nights”. ACAT team can help the patient and his family to find the resources, from where they could gain financial support and funding for care(Håkanssonet al., 2019). In this context, the medical coverage can help the patient to support his needs for Parkinson disease. Medicare is the national health insurance, which provides fees for medication, therapies and other services related to the disease. Additionally, it will help to gain funding for allied health care, including “physical therapy, occupational therapy as well for Speechpath”. Parkinson’s foundation could offer grants within $5000 to $25000, depending on his needs, assessed by the ACAT team. It helps underserved Parkinson’s disease communities, targeting newly diagnosed patients like Nicholas, advocate the patient and family for clinical trial education and participation in these programs. There are several foundation programs, which allocate funding for community healthcare. The patient can register in such programs for getting fund. Besides, these programs also offer yoga, exercise and other socialization or educational programs.

Community Inclusion & Participation
It is crucial for Nicholas to involve in community and be able to participate in the social and community activities. The key purpose of community inclusion and participation is to provide opportunities to socialize and gain different opportunities, like employment, healthcare service, social welfare and others support.The case study suggests that the patient, Nicholas suffers from disabilities due to the Parkinson’s diseases which had rendered him to be unsocial.Thus, he needs support for being engaged in community and lead a normal life. Evidences supported that “community walking” can help patients like Nicholas to engage in community, walk with his pet dog and ensure his socialization. In this regards, it has been revealed from evidences that community walking programs can help people with walking difficulties, especially Parkinson’s disease patients like Nicholas. However, there are some facilitators, like “concentration in walking, extra care with walking”, using rhythmical steps, using walking aid in the community. Community walking promotes unique enjoyable situation, where people are supported in their activities by their partners (Richfield et al., 2013).In the case of Nicholas, walking with his dog can be considered such an activity that can be enabled again. It would improve his motor skills and mobility.

Providing walking aid like automatic walkingcane would help the patient to improve his mobility and independence.

Empowering & Promoting Independence
Empowering Parkinson’s disease patient is vital for combating with his disabilities. With the progress in the disease, patients face low quality of life, which also affects socialization and self management. Thus, it is crucial for them to be empowered, so that they could combat with these difficulties and find strategies to improve their quality of life, for promoting independence. It can be done through engaging patients in self-care doing activities, involving family members. In the case of Nicholas, one of the challenges that can be understood from the analysis of the case is that he needs to socialise and be able to commence like a normal person. The difficulty for Lina is to ensure that the needs of Nicholas be managed. Additionally, educational session can also empower patients to improve self esteem and understand the need for self-management for gaining the independent life and live with the disease (Van der Marcket al., 2009).Person-centred care approach could be effective in promoting independence by the care workers in the community context.It is important for improving his communication, socialization and improved motor skills.The application of the care can allow Nicholas to resume his normal life piece by piece and ensure that he remains able to commence with the changes that are required to lead a normal life.

Cultural Awareness & Diversity
Cultural awareness and diversity are essential in a health context mainly because it can allow healthcare experts to be unbiased in their approach towards treating a patient. The importance of cultural awareness and diversity is that it can allow healthcareworkers to remain active in every community and provide the required services. The key areas and characteristics that can be associated with the cultural awareness is that healthcare workers cannot reject care that can help in the management of the community. Along with this, unbiased opinion is also not provided that can allow hinderance to the patients.It is crucial for the care workers to have enough cultural awareness and work in diverse cultural context, in order to ensure that every individual is treated equally, without any discrimination. It is also noteworthy that in a diverse care context, the patients, especially the older patients like Nicholas, will get better service, where their cultural rights and needs would be addressed by the care workers. In such a culturally supported healthcare or community context, evidences indicated that patients feel trusted and adhere upon the self-management and required care practices in a better way. It further ensures his faster and higher recovery rate (Kluckenet al., 2018).

Safe Work Practices
Safe work practices are important mainly because it can allow health care workers to identify the exact work-related actions that are to be taken so that patients can minimize any risk of injuries. It is essential for healthcare workers to maintain the safety practices so that the care given can be precise and does not make it difficult for the patients. Health safety protocols tend to differ each time depending on the condition of the patient and the environment in which the patient is cared upon.It is revealed from the case study of Nicholas that the patient has a high fall risk and aspiration risk. Thus, it is crucial for the care team to ensure that any kinds of hazards that could lead fall incidence of Nicholas, would be removed from his house premises. For instance, floors could be made even and smooth without any debris or unnecessary materials lying around. Gardening and kitchen supplies could be specialized, ensuring that the patient would not have fall risk. Additionally, no shrapnel or any physical hazards would be spread openly on the floor. Further, a support worker could be appointed for meeting his daily needs and ensure his safety throughout the day. Distant telehealth service can eliminate risk of fall for patient, while visiting physician regularly. With this practice, he could meet doctor over digital tool and ensure his safety (Richfield et al., 2013).

Conclusion
The overall assignment emphasized upon the case study of 68 years old Nicholas, who has been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. The signs of the disease have raised some difficulties for the patient and he needs support and care to combat with that. Some key areas have been identified in the assignment, for supporting the patient, including funding mechanism, community inclusion and participation, empowerment and promoting independence, cultural awareness and diversity as well as safe work practices. ?

Reference List
Håkansson, E.J., Holmström, I.K., Kumlin, T., Kaminsky, E., Skoglund, K., Höglander, J., Sundler, A.J., Condén, E. and Summer, M.M., 2019. " Same same or different?" A review of reviews of person-centered and patient-centered care. Patient education and counseling, 102(1), p.3.

Klucken, J., Krüger, R., Schmidt, P. and Bloem, B.R., 2018. Management of Parkinson’s disease 20 years from now: Towards digital health pathways. Journal of Parkinson's Disease, 8(s1), pp.S85-S94.

Richfield, E.W., Jones, E.J. and Alty, J.E., 2013. Palliative care for Parkinson’s disease: a summary of the evidence and future directions. Palliative Medicine, 27(9), pp.805-810.

Van der Marck, M.A., Kalf, J.G., Sturkenboom, I.H., Nijkrake, M.J., Munneke, M. and Bloem, B.R., 2009. Multidisciplinary care for patients with Parkinson's disease. Parkinsonism & related disorders, 15, pp.S219-S223.