Case Study: The Missionary Health Care
Case Study: The Missionary Health Care
The Case of the Missionary Health Care Worker in Africa
Jenny, a twenty-two year old college graduate, has recently decided to spend two years as a missionary in a coastal African village. As part of her duties, she will work in the missionary clinic that has recently been established in the village. This clinic will provide routine medical care and a traveling physician and nurse will visit once each week. Jenny feels fortunate to have the opportunity to use the information that was presented to her in various classes she completed while in college. After completing a 4-month intensive training period (language classes, medical preparation for work in the clinic, and cultural enrichment), she departed for Africa.
Upon her arrival, Jenny found that she would be spending most of her time in the clinic since the village had been without routine medical care for the past 2 years. The previous clinic was closed due to flooding and insufficient funds to rebuild. Initially, Jenny found that she was very dependent upon the physician’s weekly visits since her training was limited. Gradually, she found that she was beginning to call upon her training (both clinical and classroom) and she felt comfortable diagnosing and treating some of the more routine cases. One morning, a mother came in with her five-year-old child. The mother reported that the child had been unable to eat or drink anything for the past day because of vomiting. In addition, her child was experiencing severe diarrhea. Jenny asked the mother if any other family members were exhibiting similar symptoms, to which the mother replied that a few other members of the family had similar symptoms, however, not as severe. Jenny’s first thought was that the symptoms were very similar to those she had exhibited following a bout of food poisoning while in college. Since the villagers had no refrigeration and poor sanitation, Jenny gave the mother an electrolyte solution containing glucose similar to Gatorade® and told the mother to have the affected children consume this solution and nothing else for the next 24 hours. After that time, if the children were no longer vomiting, she could start feeding them tea and broth. Jenny also cautioned the mother that if the children did not seem to be getting better after 24 hours to bring the children back to the clinic.
The next morning Jenny opened the clinic to find the mother, and not just the child she had seen the previous day, but three more of the woman’s children. All of the children were exhibiting similar symptoms that now included muscle cramping and excessive thirst in addition to diarrhea and vomiting. When checking the vital signs of the children, Jenny noticed increases in both the pulse and respiratory rates accompanied by decreased blood pressures. Uncertain as to the appropriate course of action, Jenny contacted the physician by radio. Upon conveying the histories and information to the physician, Jenny received instructions to keep the children at the clinic, start intravenous (IV) infusion with lactated Ringer’s solution, and allow the children to drink as much of the electrolyte solution with glucose as they would like. The physician also gave Jenny a list of laboratory tests to run on the blood, urine and stool samples that she should collect. Jenny started the IV infusions and gave each child some of the electrolyte solution. After this, she obtained stool, blood and urine samples from each child and asked the mother to leave the children with her for care and observation. The mother agreed and said she would return later that night to help with the children.
The results of the tests run indicated severe metabolic acidosis, an increased hematocrit, hypokalemia, and the presence of Vibrio cholerae bacteria in the stool samples. Based on the results of these tests, the physician and Jenny diagnosed the children with cholera and obtained a more detailed history in an attempt to determine whether these individuals were the only ones exposed or whether these cases were the first of a possible epidemic. Jenny and the physician found that the family had recently visited relatives in a distant village where similar symptoms had been present in a number of families that had all celebrated a recent shellfish harvest.
The physician prescribed continued IV infusions with lactated Ringer’s solution and electrolyte fluid replacement by mouth. The children were not allowed to consume other foods or drinks, especially coffee or any other beverages containing caffeine. The children were also told that once the vomiting stopped they could start consuming solid foods. The children were all treated with antibiotics and stool samples were taken from other family members to determine whether or not they were infected with Vibrio cholerae. Infected, asymptomatic individuals were treated with antibiotics. The physician later explained to Jenny that caffeine was prohibited because the toxin produced by the bacteria (termed choleragen) binds to the surface of the epithelial cells of the small intestine and activates adenylate cyclase. In addition, the toxin interferes with the active transport of sodium ions in the intestinal lumen.
Why did Jenny initially suspect that the child and other family members were experiencing food poisoning? Upon further evaluation on the second day why would the child present an increased pulse and respiratory rate but decreased blood pressure?
Here are the discussion board requirements.
The initial discussion post must be at least 250 words of content, referencing the reading of the week, and include a scholarly source.
Plagiarism of any kind will result in a “0”.
Case Study: The Missionary Health Care
Case Study: The Missionary Health Care
You must proofread your paper. But do not strictly rely on your computer’s spell-checker and grammar-checker; failure to do so indicates a lack of effort on your part and you can expect your grade to suffer accordingly. Papers with numerous misspelled words and grammatical mistakes will be penalized. Read over your paper – in silence and then aloud – before handing it in and make corrections as necessary. Often it is advantageous to have a friend proofread your paper for obvious errors. Handwritten corrections are preferable to uncorrected mistakes.
Use a standard 10 to 12 point (10 to 12 characters per inch) typeface. Smaller or compressed type and papers with small margins or single-spacing are hard to read. It is better to let your essay run over the recommended number of pages than to try to compress it into fewer pages.
Likewise, large type, large margins, large indentations, triple-spacing, increased leading (space between lines), increased kerning (space between letters), and any other such attempts at “padding” to increase the length of a paper are unacceptable, wasteful of trees, and will not fool your professor.
The paper must be neatly formatted, double-spaced with a one-inch margin on the top, bottom, and sides of each page. When submitting hard copy, be sure to use white paper and print out using dark ink. If it is hard to read your essay, it will also be hard to follow your argument.
ADDITIONAL INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE CLASS
Discussion Questions (DQ)
Initial responses to the DQ should address all components of the questions asked, include a minimum of one scholarly source, and be at least 250 words.
Successful responses are substantive (i.e., add something new to the discussion, engage others in the discussion, well-developed idea) and include at least one scholarly source.
One or two sentence responses, simple statements of agreement or “good post,” and responses that are off-topic will not count as substantive. Substantive responses should be at least 150 words.
I encourage you to incorporate the readings from the week (as applicable) into your responses.
Weekly Participation
Your initial responses to the mandatory DQ do not count toward participation and are graded separately.
In addition to the DQ responses, you must post at least one reply to peers (or me) on three separate days, for a total of three replies.
Participation posts do not require a scholarly source/citation (unless you cite someone else’s work).
Part of your weekly participation includes viewing the weekly announcement and attesting to watching it in the comments. These announcements are made to ensure you understand everything that is due during the week.
APA Format and Writing Quality
Familiarize yourself with APA format and practice using it correctly. It is used for most writing assignments for your degree. Visit the Writing Center in the Student Success Center, under the Resources tab in LoudCloud for APA paper templates, citation examples, tips, etc. Points will be deducted for poor use of APA format or absence of APA format (if required).
Cite all sources of information! When in doubt, cite the source. Paraphrasing also requires a citation.
I highly recommend using the APA Publication Manual, 6th edition.
Use of Direct Quotes
I discourage overutilization of direct quotes in DQs and assignments at the Masters’ level and deduct points accordingly.
As Masters’ level students, it is important that you be able to critically analyze and interpret information from journal articles and other resources. Simply restating someone else’s words does not demonstrate an understanding of the content or critical analysis of the content.
It is best to paraphrase content and cite your source.
LopesWrite Policy
For assignments that need to be submitted to LopesWrite, please be sure you have received your report and Similarity Index (SI) percentage BEFORE you do a “final submit” to me.
Once you have received your report, please review it. This report will show you grammatical, punctuation, and spelling errors that can easily be fixed. Take the extra few minutes to review instead of getting counted off for these mistakes.
Review your similarities. Did you forget to cite something? Did you not paraphrase well enough? Is your paper made up of someone else’s thoughts more than your own?
Visit the Writing Center in the Student Success Center, under the Resources tab in LoudCloud for tips on improving your paper and SI score.
Late Policy
The university’s policy on late assignments is 10% penalty PER DAY LATE. This also applies to late DQ replies.
Please communicate with me if you anticipate having to submit an assignment late. I am happy to be flexible, with advance notice. We may be able to work out an extension based on extenuating circumstances.
If you do not communicate with me before submitting an assignment late, the GCU late policy will be in effect.
I do not accept assignments that are two or more weeks late unless we have worked out an extension.
As per policy, no assignments are accepted after the last day of class. Any assignment submitted after midnight on the last day of class will not be accepted for grading.
Communication
Communication is so very important. There are multiple ways to communicate with me:
Questions to Instructor Forum: This is a great place to ask course content or assignment questions. If you have a question, there is a good chance one of your peers does as well. This is a public forum for the class.
Individual Forum: This is a private forum to ask me questions or send me messages. This will be checked at least once every 24 hours.
