Reply Posts
Respond to your peers’ post and include the following:
· Insight on a solution to an identified peer challenge.
· Resources that may be helpful related to your peers’ post.
POST # 1 Wanda
(Wanda’s initial Post)
Reflect on the focus area or system(s) for the week.
· What challenges might you anticipate in completing this assessment?
· What differences might you anticipate when assessing patients across the lifespan?
· Share findings from scholarly resources that help in the performance of this assessment.
· What challenges might you anticipate in completing this assessment? There are hundreds of conditions that can cause problems with the nervous system, which could pose a problem with accurately diagnosing your patient. According to Bickley et al. (2017), making a neurologic diagnosis can be difficult because lesions at different nervous system levels can cause the same physical finding. One could have many challenges when completing this week’s assessment, like the assessment process itself, making an accurate diagnosis, and gathering subjective information. Therefore, when performing the neurologic examination, it is prudent to implement a fixed routine to minimize the exclusion of one of its critical components (Bickley et al., 2017). A lot comes with the nervous system for it to work correctly. According to Koch and Laurent (1999), the brain is often described as the most complex system in the universe. It controls and coordinates movements, form memories, and control behavior amongst other things. Therefore, the nervous system is overly complicated because it needs other systems to make it work. The nervous system detects environmental changes that impact the body and then work with the endocrine system to respond to those changes.
· What differences might you anticipate when assessing patients across the lifespan? According to Oberman and Pascual-Leone (2013), plasticity allows for the formation of organized nervous system circuitry and functional networks formation in prenatal and early postnatal development. As the individual is subjected to different sensory stimuli in the environment, brain plasticity allows for functional and structural adaptation and underlies learning and memory (Oberman & Pascual-Leone, 2013). During the developmental stages, children and young adults seem to have similar forms of functionally connected regions. However, there are differences in the size of functionally related areas and the strength of functional connectivity between brain regions (Oberman & Pascual-Leone, 2013). During adolescence and adulthood, the brain continues to display the capacity to adapt to the ever-changing environment, showing both functional and structural changes throughout the lifespan (Oberman & Pascual-Leone, 2013). In older adults, natural changes to the brain and nervous system occur. The brain and spinal cord lose nerve cells and weight (atrophy). Nerve cells start to pass messages slower. Waste products can accumulate in the brain tissue as nerve cells break down. This can cause abnormal brain changes called plaques and tangles to form (medlineplus.gov., 2021).
· Share findings from scholarly resources that help in the performance of this assessment. A resource that may help in the neurological assessment’s understanding is this book Clinical methods: The history, physical and laboratory examinations (3rd ed.), chapter 50, discuss the suggested sequence of the neurologic assessment and the five principal divisions of the examination. The book also talks about various frequent neurologic symptoms.
References
Aging changes in the nervous system: MedlinePlus Medical Encyclopedia. (2021, February 26). From https://medlineplus.gov/ency/article/004023.htm
Bickley, L. S., Szilagyi, P. G., & Hoffman, R. M. (2017). Bates guide to physical examination and history taking (12th ed.). Philadelphia: Wolters Kluwer.
Koch, C., & Laurent, G. (1999). Complexity and the Nervous System. Science, 284(5411), 96-98. doi:10.1126/science.284.5411.96
Oberman, L., & Pascual-Leone, A. (2013). Changes in Plasticity Across the Lifespan. Changing Brains – Applying Brain Plasticity to Advance and Recover Human Ability Progress in Brain Research, 91-120. doi:10.1016/b978-0-444-63327-9.00016-3
Walker, H. K., Hall, W. D., & Hurst, J. W. (1990). Clinical methods: The history, physical and laboratory examinations (3rd ed.). Boston: Butterworths.