Nursing Case Study For Gastroenteritis

The Two Important Issues that the Patient is Facing

Discuss about the Nursing Case Study for Gastroenteritis.

The patient, Reg, is facing an issue of dehydration as he has contracted gastroenteritis. All his symptoms leading to his admission in the hospital were specific of a bout of gastroenteritis, such as, watery diarrhea, vomiting. Other symptoms such as fever, headaches, lethargy and cramps in the stomach indicated the same (Freedman et al. 2015). The continuous vomiting and watery diarrhea is the reason for his dehydration.

Reg is also suffering from acute pain in the abdomen. One of the symptoms of gastroenteritis is abdominal pain, which is due to the infection in the stomach with gastroenteritis causing pathogens. The pain is caused due to the movement in the colon due to the imbalance of electrolyte in the system (Martinez and Mattu 2014).

The nursing interventions that can be carried out to address the issues are:

For dehydration, the patient should be made to consume fluids such as water, and in this case, should be administered with intravenous fluids in order to rehydrate the patient. Medications such as, Lonox, Motofen, Florastor, Imotil (anti-diarrheals); Aprepitant, Domperidone, Prochlorperazine, Granisetron (anti-emetics), should be administered in case of chronic conditions (Ruszczy?ski, Urba?ska and Szajewska, 2014).

For the abdominal pain, the patient should be administered with acetaminophen-based medications, such as Tylenol, to relieve the patient from abdominal pain (Gilron et al. 2015).

The necessity of using the particular nursing intervention in order to address the issue:

The patient needs to be dehydrated in order to prevent symptoms such as toxin accumulation in the body, the imbalance caused due to loss of salt and sugar, which can severely affect the normal functioning of the body. Immediate rehydration is necessary for the patient as it might lead to fainting, muscle cramps, headaches, and difficulty in urination. All these symptoms were already present in the patient and hence, this intervention was necessary (Sugata et al. 2014).

It is necessary for the drug to be administered as Reg is suffering from abdominal pain. Acetaminophen relives the patient from pain (Liu et al. 2015). 

References:

Freedman, S.B., Vandermeer, B., Milne, A., Hartling, L. and Pediatric Emergency Research Canada Gastroenteritis Study Group, 2015. Diagnosing clinically significant dehydration in children with acute gastroenteritis using noninvasive methods: a meta-analysis. The Journal of pediatrics, 166(4), pp.908-916.

Gilron, I., Tu, D., Dumerton-Shore, D., Duggan, S., Rooney, R., McGrath, M. and Orr, E., 2015. The effect of triple vs. double nonopioid therapy on postoperative pain and functional outcome after abdominal hysterectomy: A randomised double-blind control trial. European Journal of Anaesthesiology (EJA), 32(4), pp.269-276.

Liu, W., de Virgilio, C., Grigorian, A. and Arnell, T.D., 2015. Right Lower Quadrant Abdominal Pain. In Surgery (pp. 213-224). Springer New York.

Martinez, J.P. and Mattu, A., 2014. Abdominal pain in the elderly. Geriatric Emergency Medicine, p.94.

Ruszczy?ski, M., Urba?ska, M. and Szajewska, H., 2014. Gelatin tannate for treating acute gastroenteritis: a systematic review. Annals of Gastroenterology, 27(2), p.121.

Sugata, K., Wakuda, M., Taniguchi, K., Asano, Y. and Yoshikawa, T., 2014. Fatal Case of Norovirus Gastroenteritis due to Severe Dehydration. Journal of the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society, p.pit087.