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Sickle Cell Disease

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In this paper, I will be looking at and reviewing the research literature that is available concerning sickle cells disease. I chose this topic for a reason that is close to my heart; I have an eight month old infant who has been diagnosed with sickle cell disease. As a professional, I am concerned with the ways that we as nurses can contribute to providing quality care in response to clients presenting with this specific disease. As a person, I am on the other side of the health promoting, family based care relationship that I am used to in my practice; I now really appreciate how important it is for nurses to provide education, information, teaching and training to parents and clients in response to an illness like sickle cell. In a way, therefore, I am serving both as teacher and student here, as I develop knowledge and collect evidence that I will use as both a nurse and as a concerned parent seeking to understand a disease that my child has been diagnosed with. This literature review supports the argument that nurses can play an important role in promoting quality care for clients and families coping with sickle cell disease, once a strong understanding of this disease and the nurse’s role in responding to it is achieved. This, therefore, is the goal of this literature review. Gale’s “Health Reference Centre Academic” database was used for the research. In fact, a very simple search resulted in the obtainment of all six of the quality, peer reviewed, scholarly research articles that will be presented together in this paper. A key word search was performed, and the search results were limited to full text articles that were also peer reviewed. The first key words were “sickle cell” and the second key word was “nursing”. This resulted in several pages of resources, and all of the six selections were chosen from among the most recent available, and the ones that

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