Reflection 1: Plan of Care This reflection paper is compiled on the care of a patient that was admitted to Providence Holy Cross Medical Center with a diagnosis of a severe traumatic brain injury, pulmonary contusion, respiratory failure, and multiple fractures of the extremities. Due to the severity of the trauma, the patient was closely monitored in the ICU on 3/2/15. In this reflection paper, I will focus on the pathophysiology, signs and symptoms, treatments, interventions, and evaluations of care regarding the diagnosis of severe traumatic brain injury for the patient, JL, and compare and contrast the care to the textbook reading for similarities or differences.
A traumatic brain injury can occur due to either a blow or jolt to the head, which causes the normal functioning of the brain to be disrupted causing a wide array of physical and cognitive problems. The patient, JL, arrived at the Emergency Department after a motorcycle accident where his motorcycle crashed with a truck, suffering extensive injuries and brain damage from a closed head injury. A closed head injury is the result of blunt trauma; the integrity of the skull is not violated and is more serious of the two types of injury, and the damage to brain tissue depends on the degree and mechanisms of injury, (Ignatavicius, 2013). This type of injury differs from an open head injury because the skull would have been compromised, exposing the brain to outside, environmental contaminants. On the medical record, the patient was diagnosed with severe traumatic brain injury, but when reading the text it explained an injury called a diffuse axonal injury (DAI), which seemed like an accurate description of the type of injury JL suffered from. A DAI is usually related to high-speed acceleration/deceleration, typically seen in motor vehicle crashes. Significant damage occurs to axons in the white matter and