Clinical Story Social Determinants of Health, Essay Example

Introduction

Nurses can use their experiences in the clinical setting to have lasting impacts on the patients in our community through implementing practices to promote health equity and reduce SDOH. Negative SDOH poses dangers to health outcomes; based on individual clinical experiences, nurses must reduce negative SDOH to increase health outcomes and decrease unequal health experiences as future nurses.

A twenty-six-year-old male patient was admitted into the hospital due to drug poisoning. The patient had yellowish skin, complaint of abdominal pain, felt tired, had nausea, and had blood clotting complications. The diagnosis indicated various complications including, lactic acidosis, low blood sugar, kidney, and liver failure. The overdosed drug was paracetamol. The treatment method used was using Acetylcysteine IV, which reduces the toxicity (Gleeson & Alperstein, 2016). The patient had a social history of growing up in a family with domestic violence and was also physically abused by the parents. The incidence was the patient’s third suicide attempt.

The social determinant of health in the scenario is the patient’s childhood development. The patient was experiencing trauma from his childhood that he had not managed to deal with. Having a clue of the patient’s social background helped in ensuring that the future occurrences of the situation are avoided, thus ensuring that the patient is effectively assisted (Andermann, 2016). The administering of Acetylcysteine was a temporary solution to the problem, or just treating the symptoms and not dealing with the real problem.

The patient’s friend was advised to provide relationship support to enable him to deal with the childhood traumas and acquire methods that can enable him to adjust effectively to the world. He was also referred to the local support services and the hospital assisted in accessing the support services. I also acted as a resource person in the process of working to deal with his childhood traumas.

The clinical situation helped me appreciate the importance of getting to know a patient’s social background to offer an accurate diagnosis. Without the patient’s social background of abuse in the family, I would have not recommended the social support services or the friend’s support, to help him deal with the childhood traumas, and he would most likely attempt suicide again. The recommendations helped reduce the risk of suicide attempts.

In the future, I aim to ensure that I am well acquainted with the local referral resources, to ensure that I can refer patients to get help to deal with any social determinant of health. I also aim to maintain the practice of asking for a patient’s social background to help me offer an accurate diagnosis. I also hope to attend regular training on how best to address social determinants.

Conclusion

In ensuring that the health outcomes are not in danger, institutions and governments need to ensure the health practitioners can identify social determinants of health such as child development and effectively deal with them. The institutions and governments are also responsible for availing materials and resources to train the health practitioners on how best to address SODH.

References

Andermann, A. (2016). Taking action on the social determinants of health in clinical practice: a framework for health professionals. Canadian Medical Association Journal, 188(17-18), 474–483. https://doi.org/10.1503/cmaj.160177

Gleeson, S., & Alperstein, G. (2016). The NSW Social Determinants of Health Action Group: influencing the social determinants of health. Health Promotion Journal of Australia, 17(3), 266–267. https://doi.org/10.1071/he06266