NU665C Geriatric Case Study Assignment

Primary Care of the Psychiatric Mental Health Client II

In this assignment, you will review the Geriatric Case Study and analyze the data to determine the health status of the patient. You will need a minimum of two scholarly references to support your work.

Use the NU665C Geriatric Case Study Questions (Word) document to complete the case study assignment.

Follow the requirements posted in the rubric.

Interactive case studies should be five to seven pages depending on the complexity of the case. This is excluding title and references pages.

All papers must conform to the most recent APA standards.

Please refer to the Grading Rubric for details on how this activity will be graded.

NU665C

Geriatric Case Study

Transcript

Scenario:

Molly is a 66-year-old, biracial woman living in an inner-city suburb with her husband and two children. She comes today accompanied by her husband and daughter who have been concerned about increasingly odd behaviors. Molly has had previous diagnoses of schizophrenia, anxiety, and obsessive-compulsive disorder. She says she first started hearing voices around the age of 8 years old. She has spent a great deal of her life in and out of psychiatric hospitals, and this is where she said she started smoking cigarettes. Molly said that she has smoked over a pack a day for most of her life and had switched to using nicotine patches and gum in her middle 50s.

Nicotine gum is a type of chewing gum that delivers nicotine to the body. It is used as an aid in nicotine replacement therapy (NRT), a process for smoking cessation. The nicotine is delivered to the bloodstream via absorption by the tissues of the mouth. The pieces are usually available in individual packages and come in various flavors. Individuals are directed to chew the gum until it softens and the gum is then “parked,” or tucked, in between the cheek and gums. It’s chewed again until taste returns, and is then re-parked in a new location. These steps are repeated until the gum is depleted of nicotine (about 30 minutes) or the craving dissipates.

Using NRT supported Molly to stop smoking; however, she said that to this day she still feels anxious about chewing the gum and has often expressed the desire to cease altogether.

Molly disclosed that she was chewing a significantly high amount of gum and was often going to bed chewing it and had woken up choking on the gum often in the night. Molly also explained that she believed she had grown a brain tumor from chewing the gum over the past few years, and she was expecting to be diagnosed with cancer at her PCP appointment next week. Molly became very anxious when speaking about this. She explained that she thought nicotine gum could give her cancer.

Molly’s husband has been worried about her dose of antipsychotic medication not being sufficient or that she has not been taking it. He has found her wandering the neighborhood explaining to different neighbors that she will be “dead soon.” Recent stressors are the death of a close friend from COVID-19 and finding out that both her son and daughter have plans to move out next month. She has a family history of alcohol use disorder (father) and depression (mother). Son has had treatment for opioid use disorder (OUD) but has been in recovery for 1 year. She has a grandson who she can’t see because there is a restraining order against her son and the rest of her family.