Nursing

Respond to at least two of your colleagues on two different days in one or more of the following ways:

Suggest alternative assessment tools and explain why these tools might be appropriate for your colleagues’ patients.
Recommend strategies for mitigating issues related to use of the assessment tools your colleagues discussed.
Explain other health promotion considerations for patients in this population or with related issues.

ANSWER

Depression Response Paper

The Hamilton Depression Rating Scale (HAM-D) is one assessment tool that can be used to assess the patient. Reveals that this tool offers a reliable assessment of depression (Trajkovic et al., 2011). It has a high level of consistency and reliability. This tool would help the care provider evaluate the patient’s depressive status before, during, and after the treatment. Since the patient has a history dating five years ago with successful depressant treatment, this interventional method is crucial. It would allow the health professional to understand the patient’s current status by examining their progress from the treatment provided. The other key assessment tool is the Social Problem-Solving Inventory-Revised (SPSI-RTM), which would help understand the patient’s problem-solving skills. The service provider can ask questions that indicate the patient’s depressive status depending on their strengths and weaknesses linked to their social-problem solving abilities.

Exposing the patient to the tools exist as a viable strategy for mitigating issues linked with the Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS) and the Mini-Mental State Examination tools. There is a dire need to ensure that the patient understands these tools’ usage to enhance the outcome. This ensures that they provide appropriate answers to the questions. The other major strategy is asking questions that are relevant to the issue at hand. The questions incorporated in these tools should be relatable to the patient to provide quality feedback.

Regular exercising is a suitable health promotion tactic for dealing with depression. Research shows that a regular exercise program can greatly impact depressed patients’ health and well-being (Chandroth & Abraham, 2015). These patients should be exposed to such a program to help them achieve a positive mental status. Also, a healthy diet is an effective way of dealing with depression as it improves mood. Thus, individuals should be exposed to the benefits of regular exercising and eating healthy to enable them to fight depression.

References

Chandroth, D. A., & Abraham, J. (2015). Impact of a regular exercise program for depression in adults. IOSR Journal of Nursing and Health Science, 4, 68-71.

Trajković, G., Starčević, V., Latas, M., Leštarević, M., Ille, T., Bukumirić, Z., & Marinković, J. (2011). Reliability of the Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression: A meta-analysis over 49 years. Psychiatry Research, 189(1), 1-9.