Discussion Post 1 .docx - Discussion Post Nursing practice...

Discussion Post
Nursing practice and medical practice are both important when providing care for
patients. However, nursing is known as a health-focused profession that is designed to
ensure that individuals and the community attain the best possible health outcomes
through restoration and preservation interventions ( Breier-Mackie , 2006 ). As for
medicine, it can be termed as an illness-oriented profession whose top priority is the
treatment and prevention of illnesses, injuries and deformities through procedures
such as surgery and biochemical interventions. Nursing practice problems are
concerned with the potential and actual problems in healthcare as well as the human
responses. There is a holistic approach to healthcare her the patient physical, social,
spiritual and emotional well-being is considered. An appropriate example of a practice
problem in nursing is taking care of a stroke patient where the nurse has to implement
various interventions such as preventing skin injury, performing a swallow evaluation
so as to avoid aspirations, provide emotional and spiritual support, and also the
rehabilitation of the patient. Continuing with the same example above, the medical
problem would focus on providing medication so as to reduce the effects of stroke,
performing surgery so as to reduce the risk of brain damage and interventions to
address the cause of the stroke.
A PICOT is a framework that can be used to investigate the different aspects of a
problem in nursing practice. Nurses are encouraged to use the PICOT framework