Learning for patients or families of patients suffering from a medical condition is essential in improving healthcare outcomes. There are different developmental disorders, like autism spectrum disorder, that affect children in the early development stages. Autism is a condition that can fail to be diagnosed early, affecting patient outcomes. Therefore, nurses and health professionals are encouraged to offer pediatric teaching to parents and caregivers to promote early diagnosis. When offering care to patients, the nursing process is usually applied by nurses to help improve the patient’s health outcomes. The nursing process is a client-based model with 5 step by step processes that nurses should follow, including assessment, diagnosis, planning, implementation, and evaluation (Hus & Segal, 2021). In this paper, how the selection of a pediatric patient with autism spectrum disorder learning need, explanation of the health need, identifying a teaching tool, and development of a plan for the client and family will be discussed.
Interviews and Assessment
Before offering to teach to pediatric caregivers or families, assessing the client’s learning needs is essential. To learn the learning needs of the patient’s caregiver, the Childhood Autism Rating Scale (CARS) will be used as an assessment tool to help diagnose the severity of the illness in the child. The CARS is a rating scale used by health professionals after observation of autism disorder in children. The most updated forms for recording the observations are the CARS-2 for health professionals and the CARS-2QPC, a questionnaire for the caregiver or parent. The nursing process is an essential tool for it helps understand what areas a client needs to learn about, develop possible strategies for them, come up with a plan, implement the plan, and evaluate the success of the teaching plan. The parents or caregivers of the child will record the child’s behavior, like their speech, temperament, and eye contact. Using the information from this form. The nurse or health professional will be able to diagnose the child.
Understanding Learning Need
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a common developmental disorder in children. It affects the development process of a child’s brain, which later affects their speech and how they interact socially. According to the world health organization (WHO), one out of 160 children has autism (Hus & Segal, 2021). Different research has shown that ASD can be diagnosed at two years in children, but the average age at which many health officials have recorded is four years. This lag in diagnosis is even worse for minority groups in society. Delayed diagnosis of ASD affects the ability of health professionals to intervene and improve patient outcomes. Various studies have provided the benefits of diagnosing ASD early, including improved cognitive knowledge, communication skills, medical costs, adaptive behavior, and verbal abilities. Therefore, for autistic patients to achieve improved health outcomes, they need to learn how to discover this condition early to help improve health outcomes (Guan et al.,2021).
Tools To Be Used
Video conferencing enhances easy sharing of patient information in the comfort of their homes (Shubber et al.,2018). Accessing Healthcare in rural homes has always been challenging, even for developed countries like America. This means that autism is a common health problem in these areas and is not well attended to because people lack access to healthcare facilities. Video conferencing will be used for this case to facilitate learning for parents and caregivers. The education is not only for parents who have children with autism but for all interested parents or caregivers. This education will help parents understand that ASD is a developmental disorder at an early stage of child development. Through Video conferencing, the parent or caregiver will access professional guidance from autism experts and psychologists. The Video conferencing will happen in real-time to facilitate asking and answering questions. When caregivers or parents realize the symptoms of autism early, the child can get healthcare intervention, and the health outcome can be improved. Video conferencing will also promote remote consultations where virtual appointments will be organized between the health professional and the patient to help gather relevant information about the patient.
Remote healthcare services are essential and have become more common in Modern Healthcare. When covid-19 began, it was hard for people to access healthcare services. Video conferencing has made it easy for healthcare professionals to offer medical health remotely. When offering teaching to caregivers, communicating with the caregiver about the child’s behavioral changes will help nurses or health professionals detect any signs and symptoms of autism in children.
Teaching Plan Implementation
After identifying the different client needs, implementing Video conferencing to teach the client will begin. The following steps will be followed.
- The first step will be organizing the learning session according to the client’s needs. After evaluating the observations of a child, it will be easy to understand if a patient has speech or mobility needs. This will help provide caregivers and parents with information on how they can handle the patient’s needs. A schedule of the different sessions will allow a systematic teaching approach, thus improving the learning outcomes.
- Preparation of teaching materials. Using the help of other ASD professionals, well-structured teaching materials like presentations and handouts will be created according to the needs of each client to facilitate a practical learning session.
- Selecting the right Video conferencing channel. Video conferencing platforms like Zoom will be used for our learning sessions since it allows screen sharing, live chats, and Video recording. Conducting the teaching.
- The next step is conducting the teaching. After every session, clients will receive extra study materials like PowerPoint slides to help them learn more about autism.
- Evaluation. To evaluate the effectiveness of the teaching plan, gathering feedback from the client after every session will be done and recorded. To measure the success of the program, evaluating the client’s ability to diagnose spectrum disorder will be conducted.
ASD is a health condition that affects children in the early stages of development. If not diagnosed at an early stage, medical intervention becomes a challenge. Late diagnosis is caused by a lack of information on the disorder’s symptoms; therefore, offering teaching to parents and caregivers can help improve early diagnosis of ASD. First, assessing the client’s needs is an important step that will help health professionals develop individualized learning sessions for parents and caregivers. Having a teaching plan and using tools like Video conferencing will help facilitate efficient learning for parents, improving the health outcomes of patients with ASD.
References
Guan, X., Zwaigenbaum, L., & Sonnenberg, L. K. (2021). Building capacity for community pediatric autism diagnosis: a systemic review of physician training programs. Journal of Developmental & Behavioral Pediatrics, 43(1), 44–54. https://doi.org/10.1097/dbp.0000000000001042
Hus, Y., & Segal, O. (2021). Challenges surrounding the diagnosis of autism in children. Neuropsychiatric Disease and Treatment, 17, 3509–3529. https://doi.org/10.2147/NDT.S282569
Shubber, M., Östlind, T., Svensson, A., & Larsson, L. (2018). Acceptance of Video Conferencing in Healthcare Planning in Hospitals. Retrieved July 13, 2023, from https://web.archive.org/web/20200322082814id_/https://aisel.aisnet.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1595&context=amcis2018
write