Post a summary of the interview and a description of the communication techniques you would use with your assigned patient. Explain why you would use these techniques. Identify the risk assessment instrument you selected, and justify why it would be applicable to the selected patient. Provide at least five targeted questions you would ask the patient.

ANSWER

Building a Health History

16-Year-Old White Pregnant Female Living in an Inner-City Neighborhood

Building a Health History

Ratna (2019) contends that building an effective patient history as an advanced nurse requires effective communication and patient-nurse interaction to acquire accurate, comprehensive, and detailed information (Ratna, 2019). This can be achieved by establishing a positive relationship, in this case, with the 16-year old white pregnant teenager, providing a comfortable communication space and environment. However, it can be challenging to conduct effective communication with a pregnant teenager; thus, patience is critical.

Interview and Communication Techniques

A pregnant teenage girl is likely troubled, nervous, and frightened about her friends’ reaction and perspectives to her, which may result in extreme fear and guilt, making communication and opening up rather challenging. Hence, the most applicable communication techniques to use would be practicing active listening, integrating adaptive or guided questioning, and finally showing empathy, validation, and reassuring her. Primarily, active listening will improve the patient-nurse connection and interaction, critical aspects of obtaining information. Understanding the patient’s verbal and body language maximizes comprehension of the patient’s emotional state, physical state, worries, and needs (Daley, Sadler, & Reynolds, 2013). Secondly, adaptive listening will include tailoring questions from general or open-ended questions (Yes or No) moving to more specific aspects, ensuring that she communicates without being interrupted, thus providing undivided attention. This will help create a connection and comfort for the pregnant teenager to open up more and express herself. To encourage continuous expression and communication, echoing her statements and nodding is essential, as it will signify the need for the nurse to understand her problems and help her. Finally, showing empathy, validation, and reassurance will help eliminate the nervousness, fear, and guilt, she may have that would impede her communication and opening up. Empathy will maximize interaction and connection, including using phrases such as (I understand), as the patient will see the nurse cares and is ready to help, hence establishes a trustworthy and understanding nurse-patient relationship. Validation and reassurance work effectively in this case, as the patient may experience negative feelings and emotions as outlined above. Validation and reassurance work to ensure the patient understands the emotions experienced are natural, plausible, and any problem she has can be adequately addressed.

Risk Assessment

While building a health history of this pregnant teenage girl, sensitive health-related risks to consider would include her age, social income, and environmental setting. Using the teenage pregnancy-risk assessment tool, we can understand the associated health risks, including possible health and well-being damaging for the teenage girl and the child throughout childbearing and parenthood. Possibilities of having poor childbirth outcomes such as low weight, unhealthy newborns, and stillbirth cases are expected due to her young age. These risks become intense, mainly due to her environmental setting, whereby living in the inner city neighborhoods paints the low income and impoverished livelihood. Being a youth, minority, and impoverished shows possibilities of inadequate nutrition providence, care, and institutional support even from the parents and guardians (Kirchengast, 2016). Addressing this menace, which has become a central and complex problem globally, requires comprehensive, progressive, and multifaceted mitigation strategies, both short and long-term. Hence, a combination of strategies ranging from preventive, reductive, to intervening approaches.

Interview Questions

1. Do you have any problems and negative emotions that are bothering you?
2. What is your nutrition and diet regimen currently?
3. Do you consume alcohol, smoke, or take any drug?
4. Are you aware of any historical health problems such as breathing problems, diabetes, or reproductive diseases?
5. How are you coping at home and at school?

References

Daley, A. M., Sadler, L. S., & Reynolds, H. D. (2013). Tailoring Clinical Services to Address the Unique Needs of Adolescents from the Pregnancy Test to Parenthood. Curr Probl Pediatr Adolesc Health Care, Vol 43(4): 71–95. doi: 10.1016/j.cppeds.2013.01.001.

Kirchengast, S. (2016). Teenage Pregnancies. In R. Laratta, A Worldwide Social and Medical Problem, An Analysis of Contemporary Social Welfare Issues (p. DOI: 10.5772/65462). IntechOpen.

Ratna, H. (2019). The Importance of Effective Communication in Healthcare Practice. Harvard Public Health Review, 23.