Guidelines.
Critical Case Study
Assignment Guidelines: Level 6
Assessment Format: Reflective Case Study
Assessment length: Up to 4,000 words
Assessment Title: Complex Care Case study of an Adult Patient
Aim:
For students to:
Appraise your ability to use nursing theory to critically evaluate, the care received by a patient in you care on placement.
General guidelines:
Choose a patient in whose care you have been involved. Discuss your choice with your mentor. Your patient should have some complex health needs (either acute, chronic or a mixture of them both).
Gain permission from your patient (or their next of kin if they do not have capacity) and document this accordingly within your case study.
The assignment should be up to 4000 words. It should be submitted via TURNITIN
Specific guidelines:
Indicative content:
As part of this case study, there are a number of elements of care and assessment that you must include to demonstrate your ability to analyze the care that you planned and lead:
Initial Assessment
Planned Care
Interpretation of key results (for example blood tests, investigations, x-rays, MDT/interprofessional assessments)
Medicines Management (you should discuss a minimum of 2 drugs in detail and the physiological impact this has along with the rationale for choice.)
Interdisciplinary involvement
Your leadership ability within the care scenario and elements for your development towards qualification
With all of these, you need to provide details of what you found/did and why. The ‘why’ should be based on your clinical assessment and the supporting literature.
Process:
Through discussion with your mentor, select a critically ill or complex patient, whose care you have been primarily involved, to be the focus of your reflective case study.
You may choose a ‘critical event’ as the focus of your case study.
This is a reflective account, so it is acceptable to use the first person (‘I’) through your commentary to discuss your actions, assessments and learning from this event.
Seek the consent of the patient or next of kin where the patient does not have capacity to do so. This can be gained retrospectively. If you are unsure on the suitability of asking please discuss with your mentor.
Ensure that the patient, family, health care professionals and the hospital Trust remain anonymous through your work.
Record information about the care your chosen patient has received during a shift, from a holistic perspective.
You should aim to be as objective as possible. The reflective orientation of this piece of work is towards the links made between theory and practice rather than an inward looking reflection on your thoughts and feelings. You should be able to present the evidence base for the area(s) of practice involved.
Structure:
An introduction which explains the objectives of the case study. Defines key terms and outline how you will address the topic in your work.
A brief introduction to the patient on whose care you have chosen to focus, explaining the patient’s critical or complex illness/incident. Include past medical history and relevant social history. Please analyse any impact past history has on the care scenario that you have chosen to explore.
An analysis of the assessed critical/complex needs, and the care you lead and managed for your patient.
You need to explore, in significant detail, the assessments you made, your interpretation of these (with supporting literature) and how this influenced the care you planned.
You might like to include relevant documentation as Appendices to support your work. Please remember to anonymise this.
You need to link other aspects of care as part of your decision making on the actions you have taken (for example: PMH, frailty, medications, patient’s wishes).
You undoubtedly will work with the MDT when planning care for a complex or critically unwell patient. You should consider who you involved and analyse why these referrals were made.
Within the reflective process ensure that the patient is the focus, when considering feelings, rather than yourselves or other members of staff.
A critical appraisal of your findings, which includes your evaluation and analysis of the effectiveness of the care provided.
Evaluative commentary that reflects the influence of this assignment with your future practice.
Presentation:
The essay should use published literature and research to support all statements made which are not drawn directly from information gathered in practice on your chosen patient.
You are asked to use the Harvard System of referencing as per University Reference Guidelines.
Work should be clearly structured, using appropriate headings and sub-headings.
Keep to the stated word limits – marks will be deducted for work which fails to meet the guidelines on word limits (+/- 10%)
Work should be presented neatly via TURNITIN, typed and doubled spaced.
Your reference list and bibliography should appear at the end of the written work, before any appendices.
Appendices should be numbered according to their position in the text and presented in this order at the end of your work.
