Introduction

Note: Each assessment in this course builds on the work you completed in the previous assessment. Therefore, you should complete the assessments in this course in the order in which they are presented.

The biopsychosocial (BPS) approach to care is a way to view all aspects of a patient’s life. It encourages medical practitioners to take into account not only the physical and biological health of a patient, but all considerations like mood, personality, and socioeconomic characteristics. This course will also explore aspects of pathophysiology, pharmacology, and physical assessment (the three Ps) as they relate to specific conditions, diseases, or disorders.

The first assessment is one in which you will create a concept map to analyze and organize the treatment of a specific patient with a specific condition, disease, or disorder.

The purpose of a concept map is to visualize connections between ideas, connect new ideas to previous ideas, and to organize ideas logically. Concept maps can be an extremely useful tool to help organize and plan care decisions. This is especially true in the biopsychosocial model of health, which takes into account factors beyond just the biochemical aspects of health. By utilizing a concept map, a nurse can simplify the connection between disease pathways, drug interactions, and symptoms, as well as between emotional, personality, cultural, and socioeconomic considerations that impact health.

Professional Context

The purpose of a concept map is to visualize connections between ideas, connect new ideas to previous ideas, and to organize ideas logically. Concept maps can be an extremely useful tool to help organize and plan care decisions. This is especially true in the context of the biopsychosocial model, which takes into account factors beyond just the biochemical aspects of health. By utilizing a concept map, a nurse can simplify the connection between disease pathways, drug interactions, and symptoms, as well as between the emotional, personality, cultural, and socioeconomic considerations that impact health.

Scenario

You have already learned about evidence-based practice and quality improvement initiatives in previous courses. You will use this information to guide your assessments, while also implementing new concepts introduced in this course. For this assessment, you will engage in the Vila Health: Using Concept Maps for Diagnosis scenario, develop a concept map, and provide supporting evidence and explanations.

Instructions

For this assessment, you will develop a concept map and a short narrative that supports and further explains how the concept map is constructed. The bullet points below correspond to the grading criteria in the scoring guide. Be sure that your evidence-based plan addresses all of the bullet points. You may also want to read the Concept Map scoring guide and Guiding Questions: Concept Map [DOCX] to better understand how each grading criterion will be assessed.

Part 1: Concept Map

• Develop an evidence-based concept map that illustrates a plan for achieving high-quality outcomes for acute and chronic stages for a patient with renal failure related to diabetes in both an acute care facility and in the community.
• You can achieve this by following the Vila Health scenario.
• You will have a total of two concept maps. One will show the acute care facility with three diagnoses, and the other will show a home health community setting with three diagnoses.

Part 2: Additional Evidence (Narrative)

• Justify the value and relevance of the evidence you used as the basis for your concept maps.
• Analyze how interprofessional strategies applied to the concept map can lead to the achievement of desired outcomes.
• Construct the concept maps and linkage to additional evidence in a way that facilitates a reader’s understanding of key information and links. This will be done by adding links in each section of the concept map that will show your value, relevance, and evidence.
• Integrate relevant sources to support assertions, correctly formatting citations and references using current APA style.