Poly-Trauma and Nursing Competencies
Health illiteracy in the United States has reduced drastically over the last decade. However, a third of the total population still lacks perfect knowledge in the health sector. From an aesthetic point of view, traumatic patients in the country constitute the large portion of the population of the United States that lacks the knowledge on managing their health. In particular, the United States Army officers suffer major traumatic disorders from the dangerous missions they undertake across the world. The US army Institute of surgical research for joint trauma system provides the clinical procedure that helps the injured soldiers to recover from the effect of the post-traumatic encounters in the battlefields. The Institute provides specific post trauma clinical practices relating to different types of traumatic injuries sustained by the soldiers.
For instance, soldiers who suffer penetrating trauma from stabbing or gunshot injuries undergo the penetrating trauma recovery practices. In terms of empiric knowing, the evidence suggests that stabs as well as gunshots wounds results in hemorrhage (Galvan, 2013). Therefore, these patients undergo formal surgical explorations and repair interventions. These clinical practices ensure effective treatment of the injuries despite their life-threatening status. As a result, the number of patients surviving these injuries has improved over the years.
On the other hand, soldiers suffering from blunt abdominal trauma suffered compression and shearing force injuries. In terms of personal knowing, I understand that the blunt abdominal trauma in patients results in breakage or dislocation of blood vessels due to injuries subjected by solid objects. Consequently, the shearing force of contact results in the rupture of solid organs. As a result, the institute provides necessary surgical intervention to repair the rupture vessels and tissues (Galvan, 2013). Furthermore, it organizes programs to help the soldiers recover psychologically from these life-threatening injuries.
Additionally, the Institute provides clinical practices to manage traumatic brain concussion injuries. In terms of empiric knowing, it is evident that 30% of soldiers suffering from post-traumatic injuries faced concussion injuries (Galvan, 2013). Brain concussion injuries occur because of a blow to either the body or the head that jar or shake the brain causing instabilities in its natural coordination. The Institute provides several clinical practical interventions to help the affected soldiers recover from concussions. Ideally, the Institute has staged different interventions to enable each patient to undertake a suitable therapeutic process. These diagnostic interventions include Neuropsychological tests, CT scans and the MRIs (Galvan, 2013). From an aesthetic point of view, I professionally feel that the former is more effective in managing traumatic concussion effects on the affected soldiers. This is because neuropsychological practices enable the clinical practitioners to understand the reasoning capacity of the patient after the injuries fully. As a result, this would provide a significant basis for the recommended recovery procedure.
Finally, access to a universal health care system is the most common challenge faced by the healthcare institutions globally. This is because, despite several attempts to improve access to health services, many barriers still exist which hinders universal access for people across different classes of life. From an empiric point of view, it is evident that adoption of new models of care frequently by the health care institutions is one of the recurrent barriers towards universal access system (Weld, Padden, Ramsey, & Bibb, 2008). This is because new models come with new guidelines that are unknown to the general population. Furthermore, frequent policy changes and free-market competition in the health care sector has over time led to fluctuations in health care costs. As a result, this limited the access to certain specialized services to some sections of the general population.
References
Galvan, S. (2013). U.S. Army Institute of Surgical Research's Joint Trauma System named DOD Center of Excellence. Retrieved from http://www.jbsa.mil/News/News/Article/599411/us-army-institute-of-surgical-researchs-joint-trauma-system-named-dod-center-of/
Weld, C. K. K., Padden, D., Ramsey, G., & Bibb, S. C. G. (2008). A framework for guiding health literacy research in populations with universal access to healthcare. Advances in Nursing Science, 31(4), 308-318.
