HAPTER 4, Evidence-Based Practice

In completing the case study, students will be addressing the following learning objective:

Define evidence-based care.

1. Jessica, a 17-year-old girl who came with her family from Romania to the United States 10 years ago, is brought to the mental health clinic by her mother. At the admission psychiatric interview, the mother stated that Jessica has been saying for 6 months that aliens have been conducting experiments on her and will soon take her in a spaceship to their planet. Jessica is often awake at night and roams the house with a hammer and sharp knife, searching for aliens. Jessica’s mother says that she fears that some night Jessica will harm a family member whom she believes to be an alien. The mother then said that she did not bring Jessica for psychiatric care earlier because she had heard that much of mental health treatment was quackery and a waste of money. The psychiatric nurse explains to Jessica’s mother that all mental health treatment is based on scientific principles.

(Learning Objective: 3)

a. How would the nurse best explain that the care Jessica will receive at the psychiatric  facility is based on evidence? Give two examples of psychiatric evidence-based care, and explain the scientific evidence that supports your examples.

The Assignment (at least 2 pages):

Lack of breastfeeding among African-American women, especially low-income African-American women

• Provide a rationale for why you selected this issue.

Improving the well-being of mothers, infants, and children is an important public health goal as their well-being determines the health of the next generation. However, the epidemiology of maternal, infant, and child health is complex. For example, the infant mortality rate among First Nations, Inuit, or non-Indigenous groups in Quebec, Canada, is significantly higher than other Canadians despite a universal health insurance system (Luo et al., 2012). Socioeconomic status, educational attainment, and other social and biological factors may influence such disparity (Bryant, Worjoloh, Caughey, & Washington, 2010).

Fortunately, epidemiologists and policy makers are developing and implementing preventive and intervention strategies. An example of this is represented in Healthy People 2020. These strategies are aimed at addressing specific outcomes such as reducing maternal mortality during pregnancy or increasing vaccination rates among infants and children. Epidemiologists are also developing novel methods to assess outcomes of the interventions.

For this Discussion, review the week’s Learning Resources and consider the current issues of maternal, infant, and child health. Then select a maternal, infant, or child health issue that impacts your community. Consider potential solutions to this issue and how you might assess success.

With these thoughts in mind:

Post a brief description of the epidemiology of a maternal, infant, or child health issue in your community. Assuming you had unlimited resources, explain what initiative you might implement to reduce the burden of this issue in your community. Provide one specific measurable outcome that you might expect to see from this program. Using the “Leading Health Indicators” resource, select and describe two indicators that best assess the status of the outcome you desire. Provide a rationale for your selection of the indicators as an assessment of whether your initiative is achieving outcomes.

Discussion must be at least 650 words

Question description

End of Life Medical Issues (Week One)

• Physician-assisted suicide

• Voluntary active euthanasia

• Non-voluntary active euthanasia (such as seriously ill infants, people with dementia or brain damage, etc.)

• Active vs. passive euthanasia

• Euthanasia and/or physician-assisted suicide for non-standard reasons, such as non-terminal conditions (pain,

disability, depression, free choice, etc.)

Please read these assignment instructions before writing your paper, and re-read them often during and after the writing process to make sure that you are fulfilling all of the instructions. Please also utilize the assignment guidance, the modeled example, and the outline provided. (attached)

Overview
The following assignment is an exercise designed to help you begin the process of addressing a moral issue, a process that will continue in the next two assignments. In this exercise, you will do the following:

• Formulate an ethical question within one of the given topic areas (listed above) from the list provided.
• Provide an introduction in which you briefly explain the topic and the particular question on which you will focus your paper.
• State your position on the question at issue.
• Identify one consideration that would support your position and one consideration that would challenge it.

Instructions
The exercise must be at least 500 words in length (excluding title and reference pages) and formatted according to APA style as outlined in the Ashford Writing Center. Be sure to include a title page and, if you include references, a bibliography. The exercise should be in outline (not essay) format, with each part labeled and numbered as specified below.

1. 1. Part One: Formulate the Question
      Read through the list of available topic areas, and select a topic on which you would like to write your next two papers. Formulate a specific, concrete, ethical question pertaining to that topic, and place that at the top of your paper.

      The question should be specific enough to discuss in six to eight pages (which is the length of the Final Paper assignment). For example, if you were interested in discussing the topic of capital punishment, a question like “Is capital punishment wrong?” would be too vague, and would need to be reformulated as a more specific question, such as “Should we execute people convicted of first degree murder?” or “Is it just to use capital punishment when there is the possibility of executing innocent persons?” or “Is the capital punishment system racist?”

1. 1. Part Two: Provide a Brief Introduction to the Topic
      Your introduction should focus on setting out the topic and scope of the discussion in a way that clearly establishes what exactly you will be talking about and why it is significant. It should also provide any necessary context such as the background, current state of affairs, definitions of key terms, and so on. You want to try to do this in a way that stays as neutral as possible, avoids controversial assumptions, rhetorical questions, and the like. In other words, you should try to construct an introduction to the topic that could be an introduction to a paper defending any position on the question at issue.

      It is important for your introduction to narrow down the topic as much as possible. Doing so will allow you to provide a more detailed consideration of the issues and explain the reasoning more clearly in later papers. In general, arguments and analyses are much stronger when they focus on addressing a particular issue thoroughly and in detail, and doing so often requires deciding on one particular question or point to discuss, and leaving other possible ones aside.

      You should label this section of your paper as “Introduction.”

1. 1. Part Three: Provide a Position Statement
      State clearly and precisely the position you intend to defend on the question you have formulated. This does not need to be more than one sentence.

      Note that providing a position statement does not necessarily presume that you are confident in your position, that other positions do not have merit, or that you cannot change your mind later. However, for now, it is important to at least tentatively take a stand on a position you believe to be better supported than others.

      Label this section as “Position Statement.”

1. 1. Part Four: Identify and Explain a Supporting Reason
      Identify and explain a plausible reason someone could give that supports the position you have taken and be sure to clearly explain why you think it supports that position. The explanation should aim to be three to five sentences (shorter explanations are possible, but will likely be inadequate; longer explanations are likely to be too verbose).

      Label this section as “Supporting Reason.”

1. Part Five: Identify and Explain an Opposing Reason
   Identify and explain a plausible reason someone might give that would oppose or challenge the position you have taken and be sure to clearly explain why you think it would oppose or challenge it. The explanation should aim to be three to five sentences (shorter explanations are possible, but will likely be inadequate; longer explanations are likely to be too verbose). You should strive to articulate that reason in a way that someone defending a contrary position to your own would do. This requires stepping back from your own position and being able to think about the problem as objectively as you can. You should not attempt to respond to this opposing reason.

   Label this section as “Opposing Reason.”