Educating a Patient to Fight Leukemia Essay -- Leukemia Patient Educat

Currently, in the Unites States there are more than 250,000 Americans living with leukemia. Leukemia is cancer of the white blood cells, which help your body fight infection. Your blood cells form in your bone marrow. In leukemia, the bone marrow produces abnormal white blood cells; these cells crowd out the healthy blood cells, making it hard for blood to do its work ("Leukemia," 2013). Fifty four year old Regina was just diagnosed with leukemia. Upon assessment I gathered that she has never smoked in her life, she has the occasional glass of wine and loves to go for walk and hikes in the mountains. After interviewing her I learned she is ready to learn and battle this new cancer diagnosis, including her family in the teaching process is very important to Regina and she is a very visual learner. She has a very positive attitude and lots of support from her friends and family. Readiness to Learn From the beginning Regina has been ready to tackle this new diagnosis and is ready to get better. Being so young for this diagnosis, the patient understands the disease and it doesn’t affect her ability to learn. To provide a more comfortable learning environment for my patient I would not choose to do my teaching in the examination room. I feel that those rooms do not have a very warm comforting feeling and they can also be very loud and distracting. It would be better to provide a quiet, welcoming and comfortable environment. Interruptions could interfere with the patient teaching process so I would hang a â€Å"DO NOT DISTURB† sign on the door to eliminate distractions. It would also be very important to have her family there for the teaching process since they will be the ones that will provide some of her care. Th... ...ailable to them to reference if they were ever unsure. The second goal was also met. She stated two of the risk factors that she could face contracting a virus and that she will take the needed precautions to avoid death. Lastly the patient confided in me and discussed her feeling identifying three of her emotions and asked for more information on the support groups she could join. Regina also wrote down the websites I referred to her and I gave her a pamphlet on coping with leukemia. Even though she has already learned a lot about her diagnosis there is always more to be taught. Works Cited Leukemia. (2013, July 29). Retrieved from http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/leukemia.html Suszynski, M. (2011, January 04). Cooking and eating to fight leukemia. Retrieved from http://www.everydayhealth.com/leukemia/cooking-and-eating-to-fight-leukemia.aspx