Running head: OBESITY IN THE ADULT POPULATION AND THE ROLE OF

PROFESSIONAL NURSE 1

Obesity in the Adult Population and the Role of Professional Nurse

Adebisi Adedoyin

Excelsior College

November 29, 2015

OBESITY IN THE ADULT POPULATION AND THE ROLE OF PROFESSIONAL NURSE
2

Obesity in the Adult Population and the Role of Professional Nurse

According to Center of Disease Control and Prevention that chronic diseases is the leading cause

of death and disability in America. It is found that one out of four adult in the United State has

one or two chronic health conditions, chronic diseases like hypertension, diabetes, osteoporosis,

lung disease, and cancer. The Center of American Progress organized the statistics of health

related diseases among different ethnic groups; African American 15% to have diabetes or

hypertension compare to 8% whites, while latino women are twice to have cervical cancer than

white women, obesity is higher in the American Indian and the Alaskan than any other ethnic

group.

Causes of these health problems are either physiological, social, or psychosocial, that needs to be

addressed vigorously. Physically, an elderly person that is practicing sedentary lifestyle is

susceptible to related diseases like obesity, constipation, and arthritis. A person that is socially

active in drinking and smoking is also prone to develop lung related disease, respiratory diseases,

hypertension and so on. Psychosocial is caused by one risk factor leading to another, for

example, a person that is depressed and stressed is likely to develop low immunity and

pancreatic low enzyme and insulin insufficiency causes diabetes, and low immunity leads to

different kind of infection like bronchitis, UTI and so on.

A person is considered to be obese if the body mass index (BMI) is greater than 30kg/m. Obesity

occurs when the calorie ingested developed to excessive fat accumulated in the body that may

cause risk to normal health. Primarily the main cause of obesity is the imbalance in the calorie

intake versus calories burned out of the body. However, the factors that leads to obesity is

sedentary lifestyle not being able to do some kind of exercise because of demands in various
OBESITY IN THE ADULT POPULATION AND THE ROLE OF PROFESSIONAL NURSE
3

field of work, easy asses to transportation as against walking, too much time spending sitting in

front of television, food commercial that attracting the consumer in buying processed food as

against cooking home-made foods, inadequate sleeping time because of some job related issues.

The presence of obesity in our community has many consequences against good health,

according to www.cdc.org that in 2012 cardiovascular diseases were the high cause of death in

America, cardiovascular diseases like heart related disease and stroke, all these were as a result

of complication of obesity. As stated above that physically obesity is caused by sedentary

lifestyle not engaging in some form of exercise that leads to accumulation of excess adipose

tissues in the body and causing obesity, also a actively social person that drinks heavily when

they were young can develop the obesity in later years. Psychosocially, when a person that is

obese get depressed or stressed out, this can leads to lowering of immunity in the body and

infection could come in as a result of this, however depression through obesity could also leads

to malfunction of pancreatic enzymes causing inadequate or excess supply of insulin and

diabetes can be generated from this.

Short and long term effect of these consequences of obesity are constantly tiredness, because of

excessive weight of the body walking short distance is a problem, also back pain due to standing

for long hours, sleep apnea, snoring whilst sleeping, and so on. All of these mentioned are short

termed effect of obesity because it happens and does not need medical attention before it can be

addressed. Long term effect on the other hand could also be called chronic health related

condition like hypertension, cardiovascular diseases, type 2 diabetes, stroke, stroke is as a result

of uncontrolled hypertension, osteoarthritis, and possibly cancer. It is considered to be long

termed because it requires medical attention to bring it back to normal level.

OBESITY IN THE ADULT POPULATION AND THE ROLE OF PROFESSIONAL NURSE
4

A patient is said to understand the teaching received from the RN when the patient is able to

verbalize what the RN has explained and also demonstrates in action what has been performed.

For example, Mr. Mr. James is 62 year old African American 5’9 (174 cm) tall and weighs 211

lb (95.2 kg). His BMI is 31.1 kg/m2. His cholesterol is 250 mg/dL. His BP is 140/90, his fasting

blood sugar is at 103 mg/dL. He reports weakness and shortness of breath with activity. His

primary care physician has advised a weight loss of 20 pounds and exercise with diet program.

Being the RN at the time of admission I will first put together the nursing process to execute a

nursing care plan for this patient. All these above will be my nursing assessment, and the nursing

diagnosis will be

Imbalanced nutrition more than body requirement as evidence by BMI of 31.1, and high lab

value of cholesterol more than normal limits.

Patient expected outcomes

1. Patient will lose at least 1-2 pounds weekly

2. Walk at least 20mins daily every week.

3. Will understand strategies to develop to avoid excessive eating.

4. Will verbalize the importance of diet control and exercise.

Nursing interventions.

1. Educate the patient about the food that is high in fats; Rationale. Some patient do not

really understand the food that is high in fats and cholesterol, but by teaching them and

showing them in details will let them know what food they need to watch out for.
OBESITY IN THE ADULT POPULATION AND THE ROLE OF PROFESSIONAL NURSE
5

2. Teach patient about to involving in regular exercise; Rationale. Letting the patient

understand the importance of burning out excess fatty substance in the body is a good start

in losing excess weight.

3. Encourage patient to sleep at least 8 hours in a day. Rationale, having normal 8 hours of

sleep will allow the body metabolism increases and food to digest on time.

4. Check patient vital signs daily especially the blood pressure. Rationale, this will let the

nursing department know if the intervention is going as planned

5. Teach patient about the diet that in line with the religion practices, but to be very careful

of balancing the diet. Rationale some patient are very particular about their religion diet,

for example, the Mormon, Hindus, and Jewish have various food restriction. But the RN

can explain to the patient about which one to watch out for within their religion

background.

Evaluation.

A month after eating a balanced diet, and low carb diet and start to exercise, Mr. James has lost 4

pounds which is ok as planned. He has also keep a food diary for himself, and also restrict

himself from excessive eating. He has also start planting in his garden to prevent him from

sedentary lifestyle by doing some light activities. He is walking for 20 minutes 5 days a week.

He plans to increase his activity time to 30 minutes. When nurses check his BP, it is within

normal limits. He has also joined the fitness club and registered for daily exercise. After all these

evaluation it is actually found that Mr. James is compliant with the weight loss program, both

verbalizing what has been taught and also demonstrated with actions too.
OBESITY IN THE ADULT POPULATION AND THE ROLE OF PROFESSIONAL NURSE
6

In addition to above Mr. James is a Catholic, therefore there is no too much of diet restriction

planned for him, but just to follow all orders as planned and adhere to it with balancing his diet

References

Leslie S. Treas Judith M Wilkinson Basic Nursing Concepts, Skill, and Reasoning Philadelphia,

PA: F.A. Davis Company, [2014]

www.cdc.org

www.health.gov