Describe what life span considerations you might use in applying the nursing process to infants, school-age children, younger adults, and older adults in relation to immunizations and wellness.
Overview: This week’s topic ask us to differentiate health promotion related to immunizations by developmental stages. Information about the recommended vaccines by age can be found on the CDC website.
Assessing what the client, or parents in the case of a child, believe about health and vaccinations at any developmental stage is the first step. In the case of infants and school age children who have no choice, a nurse would need to assess the parent’s health beliefs and develop a plan from there. If the parents do not believe in vaccinating then the intervention would be with the parents. Similarly, young adults would need to be assessed to determine the date of the vaccinations and if a Tdap or Td is needed. Young adults should be assessed to see whether they are receiving annual flu vaccinations and if not why. The health of older adults and progression of chronic diseases would need to be assessed. Older adults may need a pneumonia vaccine, a hepatitis vaccine, shingles vaccine, and the flu vaccine. There are new vaccines out this year. Because of the different types of pneumonia vaccine, zoster (shingles) vaccines, new hepatitis and types of flu vaccine can be very confusing, there is a lot of patient teaching that needs to happen with older adults.
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