Responses to Other Students: Respond to at least 1 of your fellow classmates with at least a 300-word reply about their Primary Task Response regarding items you found to be compelling and enlightening. To help you with your discussion, please consider the following questions:
- What did you learn from your classmate’s posting?
- What additional questions do you have after reading the posting?
- What clarification do you need regarding the posting?
- What differences or similarities do you see between your posting and other classmates’ postings?
For assistance with your assignment, please use your textbook and all course resources.
Support your response with at least 2 APA-cited scholarly references. One of the references must be UpToDate.
Clinicians need a solid understanding of developmental physiology, as numerous physiological processes change during different life stages. Infants, children, adults, and older adults all have varying organ system functions. The immune response to injury or illness differs, the rate of medication metabolism is different, and injury healing can occur at faster or slower rates. Once clinicians know what normal physiology for each age is, they will know which findings are pathologic for that patients age. Human growth and development are defined as physical, cognitive, and psychosocial changes that occur throughout life (Balasundaram & Avulakunta, 2023). Some diseases can be presented differently in children versus adults. Febrile seizures are very common in children when their temperature elevates too quickly (Balasundaram & Avulakunta, 2023). Pediatric nurses should recognize this so they can intervene with treatment and family education.
Clinicians should also understand pathogenesis or disease process. Pathogenesis describes the cascade of events at the cellular and system level that lead to the development of clinical disease (UpToDate, 2024). For instance, type 2 diabetes mellitus is caused by insulin resistance. Early in the disease process, patients will often make high amounts of insulin to metabolize glucose and avoid hyperglycemia. As insulin resistance continues, the pancreas beta cells struggle to produce enough insulin to counteract it. Patients become chronically hyperglycemic and damage occurs to the vessels that supply oxygen and nutrients to major organs (UpToDate, 2024). Understanding how this disease develops can help providers treat patients with symptomatic therapies as well as modify lifestyle choices to slow beta-cell death.
Clinicians should know how to identify clinical manifestations because these are signs and symptoms related to disease. Some illnesses can show up in ways that look alike, making it tricky to tell them apart without running tests. For instance, abdominal pain might indicate issues like bowel obstruction, gastroesophageal reflux disease, or pancreatitis. Understanding pathophysiology can aid clinicians in ruling out causes of abdominal pain with the help of associated symptoms, patient risk factors, and diagnostics. Identifying clinical manifestations also allows providers to identify disease processes in the early stages before significant progression occurs maximizing patient safety.
Clinicians should also be educated and know why people become sick because many factors can play a role in disease development. Some diseases occur because of gene mutations, others from infection, and still others from physical or emotional stress. Understanding how different diseases occur can help clinicians identify risk factors they can address with patients. An example would be, if providers know that smoking causes many lung diseases and heart diseases they can ask patients to quit smoking.
Clinicians should have a firm grasp on developmental physiology, pathogenesis, clinical manifestations, and etiology. By understanding these concepts they are able to provide safe, effective, patient-centered care. Developmental physiology allows clinicians to identify what is normal and what is not in patients of all ages. Clinical manifestations and etiology help clinicians identify diseases early on and understand how diseases cause illness. Disease processes can also help determine a diagnosis allow clinicians to treat patients accordingly and provide patient education on reducing complications and further injury. Pathophysiology allows clinicians to understand both physical and psychiatric disorders to provide holistic care to their patients and help destigmatize mental illness. Pathophysiology knowledge can help clinicians think critically about their patients in order to best assess, treat, and advocate for them at any stage of life.
References
Balasundaram P, P., & Avulakunta ID, I. D. (2023). Human growth and development. In StatPearls. StatPearls Publishing. NCBI Bookshelf
UpToDate. (2024). Approach to the patient with disease: Pathophysiology and clinical reasoning. UpToDate
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