The assessment of the patient involves the use of questions and screening tools to help understand the patient’s health status as well as their medical history. The results of this assessment may help inform the type of clinical intervention which suits a specific medical case. An example is a scenario where the caregiver adapts treatment if the assessment outcomes indicate that the patient is allergic to certain medications.
When assessing a client for an illness, an interventionist has to take into consideration the client’s age, and this is important because a child may not adequately be open to sharing their thoughts or concerns like adults would (Acquah et al., 2019). Accordingly, this warrants the need to modify the assessment approach when working with a non-adult client. This applies in a case where one needs to assess a 12-year old child who is dealing with weight-related health events as this study explores.
The teenage patient in the case is severally underweight, and her parents also have this problem, and based on this information, there are possible health issues she might be having or at risk of. One of the weight-linked issues she might be experiencing is immune-based illness, and an example is the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV).
This is because autoimmune diseases can cause a decline in one’s body weight, and some such as HIV are transmittable through birth. Still, it is possible that the patient has Lupus considering that a parent can transmit the disease to their newborn during the child birth. Anemia is another medical problem that one can link to the 12-year old. Besides, the patient might be at risk of hyperthyroidism (De Leo, Lee, & Braverman, 2016). This condition is genetic, and it is probable that it could be one of the causes of the weight loss in the parents and the child.
The information pertaining to the 12-year Old’s weight problem can only help a clinician make general inferences about her health. This means that they will need additional patient data to make reliable conclusions concerning the child’s health. For example, they may need to check whether the patient has a history of joint pain, and this information is pertinent when it comes to determining or ruling out the presence of lupus.
The clinician may also have to pay attention to the diarrhea or sores over the patient’s face or on their nasal areas. These signs can help them decide on whether HIV is a possible contributor to the patient’s weight issues (Tosheno et al., 2017). Furthermore, it would be important to take into consideration the patient’s feeding habits given that food play critical role in terms of helping one add weight.
The assessment of the risks is equally important and it can help provide details about the underlying issues which cause the weight loss. The details regarding the history of the substance use and abuse can be useful when seeking to determine the key clinical issue which affects the patient. This is because the sharing of the needles can expose one to the risk of contracting weight-related health issue such as HIV.
The child’s condition may also stem from dangerous sexual behaviors, and the information on whether she has been having an intimate relationship with any person can be crucial when one wants to understand the patient’s health condition. When gathering this kind of information, the provider may need to create a good relationship with the patient by asking her to state whether she is comfortable talking about certain things (Kumar et al., 2019).
Parents play critical role in helping their children to be healthy, and certain key strategies can be effective in helping encourage them to help the assigned child have good health. Helping the parents establish a meal plan can be an effective approach to encouraging the parents’ commitment to the health of the child.
Parents can encourage their child to eat certain foods which can be helpful in building the muscles and body mass (Avis et al., 2015). The other strategy is to help the pa
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