Critically reflect on the skills of assessment in relation to patients who present with minor illness/injury, acknowledging the bio-psycho-social needs of the patient and their family were acknowledged and met.

Emergency Care: Care of Minor Illness and Minor Injury

Minor illness

The below learning outcomes 1 2 and 4 must be met in minor illness and minor injury cases.

LO1  Apply knowledge of the pathophysiology of minor injury Apply your knowledge of the relevant pathophysiology and evidence based management relating to the minor illness you have chosen.

LO2  Critically reflect on the skills of assessment in relation to patients who present with minor illness/injury, acknowledging the bio-psycho-social needs of the patient and their family were acknowledged and met.

LO4  Examine the relevant evidence, clinical guidelines and healthcare policy which relate to therapeutic interventions you used to treat patient

Within this section you need to discuss a specific care episode you have been involved with relating to a patient presenting with a Minor Illness.

To preserve your word count and avoiding the need to tell the reader the story of what happened, running the risk the writing becoming too descriptive, we recommend that you place a description of the care episode within the appendices of your assignment and refer to it within the main body of your text.  You could “set the scene” within the main body of text however limit this to a couple of sentences.

Note this is not a critical reflection of how you performed when undertaking the assessment.  The work needs to critically discuss the application of assessment skills such as using a structured approach to the assessment e.g. SOAPE and symptom analysis tools such as SOCRATES.  What did the assessment process tell you about the patient’s condition and how did this help with the subsequent management.  Using a reflective model is NOT needed here and will result in the work being descriptive and not meeting the learning outcome.

It is imperative that you discuss the pathophysiology in depth what is happening down to cellular level  – what is going wrong and why, please do not discuss the normal pathophys as it can be taken that if you detail the abnormal (as in your case studies) then the normal is already known.  Guidelines and policies need covering i.e. NICE/JRCALC and specific ones to the presentation: Ottawa, local trust etc.  The assessment is essential: triage, consultation, symptom analysis tools and how these aid a structured approach.