Children Cochlear Implants
Though there are many topics to choose from, cochlear implants for children seems the best clinical issue to highlight. Nevertheless, the cochlear implant is a surgical implanted electronic prosthetic device. It provides electrical instigation to the nerve fibres in the cochlea and bypasses damaged hair to deliver quality sound to an individual. It is made up of two components which include an implanted device and an external sound processor. The sound processor gathers sound information, processes the signal and transmits it to the cochlea electrodes. (Christiansen and Leigh,2002)
Moreover, the signals are sent to the auditory nerve and forwarded to the brain, respectively. It is, however, essential to note that there are different types of implants and osseointegrated devices. They include auditory brainstem and bone-conduction auditory implants. The surgical process is usually complex and requires an inter-professional cochlear implant team. Some of them include speech-language pathologists, social workers, audiologists, otologist and nurses, among other examples. This team not only helps the child during the surgical process but the recovery process as well. The entire implant process is, therefore expensive and not affordable to a good number of individuals. However, it has been noted that the nursing practice has not been of practical assistance to the children after surgery. This was not the case back in the day as nursing interventions plus diagnosis were related to bleeding control, infection prevention, communication, surgical wound care, comfort and well-being of the patient. (Christiansen and Leigh,2002) Practising these entities guided the nursing team, favoured quality and brought about holistic care. Today nurses have forgotten to apply some interventions like communication, infection prevention, comfort, and well-being. In return, this taints the quality of services that the patients receive. Much of this is through complaints from parents who have stated that nurses are not doing their work based on their ethical and work responsibilities. Nurses should, therefore, adopt the previous practices to ensure quality services among patients. This will assist in ensuring issues regarding the patients are solved, especially during the recovery process.