Health Needs for Veterans and Their Families - Paper Example

American veterans and their families need a lot of care after they come from war zone areas like Iraq and Afghanistan. Any nurse should be able to ask a patient if he or she ever worked on a military. So that they can be given the necessary support they require. The help they need can affect their families either directly or indirectly, so they lack not only the services but also their families (Holdeman, 2009). The issues affecting veterans also affects their families. Many of the militarys suffer from psychosomatic trauma. Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) came to limelight after numerous concerns by war veterans. Studies have indicated that they are exposed to PTSD (Holdeman, 2009). Factors that make up for the posttraumatic adjustments include the mental history problem of both the veteran and their family, how combat was and the experience in it, physical injuries and the social context in returning from combat.

After returning from combat, a soldier requires a long-term and an inclusive health care. Since the commencement of the Iraq war in 2003, more than 10,000 combatants have been injured either their skull or the limb that can be triggered by a blast or a bullet wound (Holdeman, 2009). After combat, they will return to the civilian life having some brain injuries and amputees. This will affect their lifestyle since they will face challenges in providing for themselves and their families.

Advocacy for the needs of veterans and their families

Due to the psychological injuries that are faced by the military, I would be at the frontline to the car for both the visible and invisible wounds during combat and PTSD (Holdeman, 2009). It is much essential for the nurse to answer all calls that come from the veterans and their families. I would advocate for assisting the wounded soldiers and supply them the required commodities they require. One can also record the particulars of families and patients for those who have served in the military so that special services can be offered to them. Finally, one can volunteers in veteran and military organisation that provides nursing services.

Advocacy skills

In empowering the soldiers and any client to be successful one should have some compassion, courage and commitment. This is mostly associated with the nurse-client relationship. One should be accountable to the virtues that are associated with it. Competence and skills should have some intellectual and theoretical wisdom (Begley, 2010). The other factor is autonomy; a nurse should be able to do his or her work with discernment, judgment and understanding that you can make your own choices without depending on anyone. Finally, one should show some assertiveness and all the virtues that are associated with it. You should have some moral courage showing excellent interpersonal skills. You should have some patience and some courtesy (Begley, 2010).

Responsibility of a nurse as an advocate

As an advocate, a nurse should be alert in case of some ineptitude, immoral, unlawful or any of the lessened practice by any affiliate of the nursing or healthcare fraternity which can place the health care of a patient in jeopardy (Begley, 2010). Advocacy means speaking for the patient. For instance, a nurse may realize that a particular patient has some pain, to advocate for the patient you have to order for the patient's medicine. One has to speak for them and give them what they need. However, there is some instance that advocacy cannot be applied. For example, a patient has just come from surgery and given some pain medicine (Holdeman, 2009). An hour later he complains that still, he has a lot of pain. However, the order says that he is given another dose after an hour.

References

Begley, A. M. (2010). On being a good nurse: reflections on the past and preparing for the future. International journal of nursing practice, 16(6), 525-532. (Begley, 2010)

Holdeman, T. C. (2009). Invisible wounds of war: Psychological and cognitive injuries, their consequences, and services to assist recovery. Psychiatric Services, 60(2), 273-273. (Holdeman, 2009)