Community Nursing Case Study

The purpose of this essay is to address the issues based on case study one, community nurses play a fundamental role, in many patients lives by managing and planning the multiple factors of people living with chronic and complex conditions. Nurses must have the ability to perform multiple tasks in order to manage complex conditions, which are often illnesses that are interconnected. Community nurse’s roles involves often having knowledge of these conditions in order to prioritise these illness to achieve practical goals for their patients. (Sines, Fanning, & Potter, 2013).
In case study one, Peter is a 52 year old, morbidly obese, has type 2 diabetes with poorly controlled diabetes, suffers of obesity ventilation syndrome and sleep apnoea.

Therefore, nurses must be aware of the interrelatedness of his current health issues and how they interact with each other. According to Schreiber, Nones, Reis, Chichorro, & Cunha (2015), metabolic disorders is mainly responsible for diabetic neuropathy. Diabetes, weight changes, smoking and physical inactivity are strong factors leading to long-term complications associated with Peter’s condition, such as, retinopathy, microvascular disease (nephropathy is a common reason for commencing dialysis on patients with T2DM) and macrovascular disease (Dunning, 2013). If Peter’s diabetes is properly controlled, becomes compliant with his medications, it will decrease any further deterioration as mentioned above, therefore his condition will improve. Effective controlled management of T2DM, will have positive effects on different aspects of his health. Gaining a personal sense of control, alleviating some of his depressive symptoms, which in turn increases his motivation to lose weight and socialise. Exercising can also reduce symptoms of neuropathic pain, which can contribute to Peter’s willingness to exercise and benefit from its effects (Van der Heijden, Pouwer, Romeijnders, & Pop,

In Peter’s case, the nurse can examine the sliding scale insulin chart and discuss his experience with the intervention. The nurse can use the Morisky Medication Adherence Scale (MMAS), a reporting tool filled out by the patient before and after the intervention to identify obstacles to adherence and measure the efficacy of the strategy used (Wai, & Fresco, 2015). Encouraging Peter to reflect on his health behaviours and provide an opportunity for further collaboration between him and his nurse to improve his medication