You are to write a case study describing a patient situation where someone has been diagnosed, treated and now surviving with a cancer. The goal of this assignment is to integrate the knowledge gained in this course into a patient situation. The assignment will be a traditional paper with the major subheadings of: patient background, early detection and screening, work-up for cancer, diagnosis and stage, treatment plan, side effects experienced with pharmacologic and nonpharmacologic strategies recommended and response, prognosis and potential for relapse, and survivorship plan. Within each section, describe what was done and why (rationale for actions). Please create a case study using the information attached. Be creative!
Use your resources- you are essentially telling the story of a person with cancer and describing their “case” or situation and at times, what you as the nurse did to help them. You have read and learned a lot about cancer and its treatment this semester, so the goal of the assignment is for you to demonstrate that knowledge by anticipating what happens to patients at all points in the cancer trajectory. This will likely include information from their past, present and future. It may be a good idea to review or condense some past assignments. You will be using your resources as references.
You can be creative as you develop this, but, the case study should be based in the reality of what might happen to the patient. Some of it may be pretty straight forward (i.e. treatment plan for a person with a particular stage of cancer), but some of it may not (i.e. types and severity of side effects experienced). Pretend that you are describing this patient to a colleague, give enough information so they get a full picture of their case.
***If you decide to create a case study with someone who is at end of life and/or on hospice, please know that you still need to discuss a realistic and thorough survivorship plan- which may be difficult.
If you choose to develop a case study on someone with an extreme age (child or 90 year old), you still need to talk about early detection and screening tests in some way, do not skip this question. The same thing if you put some at end of life and hospice care- you still need a viable survivorship plan. Don’t take short cuts and think a section does not apply.
Also, please DO NOT list every question on the rubric and answer it one by one. The questions are there guide you and help you figure out what you should describe in that section.
