A family nurse practitioner's role in providing high-quality clinical services
A family nurse practitioner, whether working in the inpatient or outpatient divisions, must be a competent, qualified, dependable, and experienced medical officer with the ability to provide high-quality clinical services. Also, an outpatient segment may be more appealing and difficult due to the unique necessities of monitoring one's patients in the lack of real-time data collected from every other time, as opposed to the inpatient scenario (Jerstad, Boutelle, Ness, & Stice, 2010).
The challenge of identifying and treating depression in female adolescents
One such significant situation would be the identification and treatment of depression in female adolescents. Because of the many confounding factors at the teenage developmental period in life, the family nurse practitioner would efficiently run a risk of a misdiagnosis because of the physical, emotional, and physiological variables that pose a confounding challenge. Consequently, ruling out the physical signs of depression among the teenage females first; would be a priority. Depression among adults and adolescents alike, do afflict the two populations to a degree of 20 percent each on average (Jerstad et al., 2010). Both related suffering and impairment are evidenced in the adolescence depressive maladies. Hence depression is an ailment of public health concern among the affected female adolescents. Because depression in adolescents could mimic many other diseases, a differential diagnosis and careful medical examination are desirable (Rohde, Beevers, Stice, & O'Neil, 2009). However, early detection is necessary because depression in adolescents is manageable, treatable, and even preventable. On the other hand, there is a high likelihood that malignancy would occur, and future cases in adulthood could persist.
Ruling out physical attributes and considering developmental challenges in depression diagnosis
Many physical attributes to depression among the female adolescents would be ruled out first in case a diagnosis is being made by a family nurse for instance. The reason is that the typical signs and symptoms that are evidenced among the adult generation are not expressly similar to those manifested among the female adolescents (Rohde et al., 2009). Teenagers face different forms of symptoms when it comes to depression because of the many developmental challenges they face at such periods of growth, some of which may include; peer pressure, developing bodies and changing hormone levels. Moreover, escalated levels of anxiety, stress, and at extreme levels, suicidal attempts could be confounded by other factors, the nature of livelihood at; work, family, school, personal, and social centers. As it could be the case among adults, the symptoms in female teenagers give an entirely different manifestation of a suspected depression plus other diseases and social concerns, hence confounding, which would include; talk of suicide, decrease in energy, feeling helpless, worthless, and hopeless, withdrawal from friends, appearing tearful and irritated among other emotional presentations (Jerstad et al., 2010). Therefore, a family nurse practitioner would typically rule out a diagnosis of depression first, among female adolescents.
References
Jerstad, S. J., Boutelle, K. N., Ness, K. K., & Stice, E. (2010). Prospective reciprocal relations between physical activity and depression in female adolescents. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 78(2), 268–72. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0018793
Rohde, P., Beevers, C. G., Stice, E., & O’Neil, K. (2009). Major and minor depression in female adolescents: Onset, course, symptom presentation, and demographic associations. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 65(12), 1339–1349. https://doi.org/10.1002/jclp.20629
