Paediatric Care for Potential Nursing Student- myassignmenthelp

Question: Discuss about thePaediatric Care for Potential Nursing Student. Answer: Dear Ema (Potential Nursing Student), I am writing this letter to demonstrate my personal reflection on my ever first experience of handling autistic children. I have come to know that you too are planning to join the same training program and hence, thought of sharing my experience. After completion of second year in nursing discipline I was assigned to participate in paediatric nursing care plan for the autistic children in a state run special care school. I was excited and anxious at the same time. Autism is a disorder of brain that hinders individuals ability to relate thoughts and communicate with others. This complex psychological interplay was the main inspiration behind my interest to provide quality paediatric care to autistic children. I was asked to monitor and provide paediatric care to two children who are 4 years old. It is the best time to provide treatment for the autistic children because as per the reports, autism is usually diagnosed when the child reaches the age of three (Dawson et al., 2012). Follow ing my two weeks stay with the children, I gradually came to know several complexities associated with autistic children. Moreover, I realised that my forte lay in paediatric nursing as I can easily amalgamate with the children and love to spent time with them. During my first day encounter with those autistic children, I noted relevance of unusual high rate of sensory response (Baranek et al., 2013). The girl child, showed hyper responsiveness. Hyper responsiveness is a kind of exaggerated behaviour response that occurs in response to stimuli (Baranek et al., 2013). The girl child seemed uncomfortable when I stretched my hands to cuddle her in my lap. This showed that she is hyper responsive and prefers avoidance of touch. The boy child on the other hand is scared of sounds, like horns of vehicles or school bell. He covered his ears at once in disgust when the school bell rang. My first day encounter with these two autistic children was not smooth rather they refused to communicate with me. Children who are suffering from the autism spectrum disorder are characterised with delayed communication skills and problems with socialization (Bhat, Galloway and Landa, 2012). Young children who are suffering from autism spectrum disorders suffer fro m developmental difficulties and these difficulties differentiate these autistic children from the other normal children. The lack of social and communication skills is reflected via joint attention, affective sharing, imitation and object play skills. I also spotted that the boy child with autism is suffering from motor limitation skills. Due to his motor limitation skill, he is compelled to provide shared focused attention on communication which is otherwise learned as social skills (Kasari et al., 2012). On the second day, when I tried to communicate with these children via providing a friendly approach, I noticed that these students lack attention. This is another common symptoms exhibited by the autistic children (Adams and Jarrold, 2012). Other symptoms which are common between these two children are difficulty in expressing their needs, echolalia (a condition in which an autistic child repeats a same word in a loop which was hear previously), inability to identify objects and loss of words in the middle of a sentence (Solomon et al., 2012). With so much of difficulties with such a complex disease, at the beginning of the paediatric care I was confused regarding which part should I focus. However, my seniors helped me to understand that it is the difficulty in speech which is the major stigma of problem behind the autistic patients. Since each children with autism is unique so unique intervention plans is needed in order to tailor specific needs. For my two focused group children, my intervention plan was proper development of speech. Augmentative an alternative communication (AAC) systems like picture exchange and speech generating devices are effective in teaching children with autism to acquire a proper communicative repertoire. Researchers have shown that communicative (mand) training helps the children with autism to fight against via decreasing the rate of challenging behaviour via increasing the rate of speech production. I here followed an aided ACC treatment. Aided ACC generally include device based system like Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS) and Speech Generating Devices (SGD). In the domain of device, I used my own iPhone. Handheld technology is widely spread and accepted as a part of the class room learning environment and hence I opted for Iphone only as it was easy to use and operate. Moreover, device like Iphone as a speech generating device can be considered as less stigmatizing and more normalizing for children with disability (Lorah et al., 2013). The result of the use of iPhone as a speech generating device was positive. Both the children who were under my care welcomed this approach. Children at present are well acquainted with technology and especially with smart phones. They thought it is a kind of new play activity and participated in full swing with the communication therapy. Moreover, this use of iPhone as a communication therapy also helped me to gain the trust of the children. They gradually stopped looking at me as an extruder and started showing gestures of corporation. Over the tenure of two weeks when I was in that state run school, providing care for the two autistic children, I learnt a lot about the disability including what the children enjoyed and what they didnt. I also became aware of their strength. On day three of the second week, I remember that I was sitting next to the children and they were watching an interactive YouTube video played over the screen of the iPhone. Video watching was the part of the music therapy (Geretsegger, Holck and Gold, 2012). Out of a sudden, the girl rolled back her eyes and started having seizures. Seizures can be defined as an epileptic condition that affects the brain (Buckley and Holmes, 2016). It is commonly known as fits and is common symptoms expressed by the autistic patients in certain occasions. However, since it was my first time encounter with seizures, I became extremely scared. I immediately called my seniors at the school and they gradually brought the situation under control via referring to th e anti-epileptic medication as prescribed by the attending doctor. In the midst of all this mess, I quickly lifted the boy and brought him to a separate room such that such traumatic visuals may not harm his mental peace. From this situation I learnt that autism is associated with epilepsy and immediate administration of medicine will promote speedy recovery. Following by two week with the two autistic children, I learnt that if proper care, sympathy is given to these children along with cognitive behavioural therapy and speech therapy, the detrimental effects of autism in the later stages of life can be control (Geretsegger, Holck and Gold, 2012). If you are asked to provide nursing care to autistic children, I would recommend you to vouch for speech therapy. Speech therapy actually helps these children to communicate in a better way and also increases their level of attention. This particular placement inspired me a lot; it motivated me to do something meaningful for the autistic children. Their inability to express their thoughts, fear of unknown showed me, how helpless they are and how some simple therapy can help them out recover these problems. Moreover, after I finish my nursing training, I would like to start my career as a paediatric nurse and will devote my time to help the autistic children via citing this encounter as a valuable experience. At the end, I hope that there will be more awareness and person centred care therapy of the children who are suffering from complex mental disorders. Regards, References Adams, N.C. and Jarrold, C., 2012. Inhibition in autism: Children with autism have difficulty inhibiting irrelevant distractors but not prepotent responses.Journal of autism and developmental disorders,Alabama, Tuscaloosa, USA, 42(6), pp.1052-1063. Baranek, G.T., Watson, L.R., Boyd, B.A., Poe, M.D., David, F.J. and McGuire, L., 2013. Hyporesponsiveness to social and nonsocial sensory stimuli in children with autism, children with developmental delays, and typically developing children.Development and Psychopathology,North Carolina, 25(2), pp.307-320. Bhat, A.N., Galloway, J.C. and Landa, R.J., 2012. Relation between early motor delay and later communication delay in infants at risk for autism.Infant Behavior and Development,University of Connecticut, United States, 35(4), pp.838-846. Buckley, A.W. and Holmes, G.L., 2016. Epilepsy and autism.Cold Spring Harbor perspectives in medicine,Weston, FL, USA, 6(4), p.a022749. Dawson, G., Jones, E.J., Merkle, K., Venema, K., Lowy, R., Faja, S., Kamara, D., Murias, M., Greenson, J., Winter, J. and Smith, M., 2012. Early behavioral intervention is associated with normalized brain activity in young children with autism, North Carolina, Journal of the American Academy of Child Adolescent Psychiatry,51(11), pp.1150-1159. Geretsegger, M., Holck, U. and Gold, C., 2012. Randomised controlled trial of improvisational music therapy's effectiveness for children with autism spectrum disorders (TIME-A): study protocol.BMC pediatrics,Vienna, 12(1), p.2. Kasari, C., Gulsrud, A., Freeman, S., Paparella, T. and Hellemann, G., 2012. Longitudinal follow-up of children with autism receiving targeted interventions on joint attention and play.Journal of the American Academy of Child Adolescent Psychiatry,California, 51(5), pp.487-495. Lorah, E.R., Tincani, M., Dodge, J., Gilroy, S., Hickey, A. and Hantula, D., 2013. Evaluating picture exchange and the iPad as a speech generating device to teach communication to young children with autism.Journal of Developmental and Physical Disabilities,Philadelphia, 25(6), pp.637-649. Solomon, M., Miller, M., Taylor, S.L., Hinshaw, S.P. and Carter, C.S., 2012. Autism symptoms and internalizing psychopathology in girls and boys with autism spectrum disorders.Journal of autism and developmental disorders,California, 42(1), pp.48-59.