NR305 Week 7 Discussion, Assessment Techniques
Week 7 Reading:
Weber, J.R. & Kelley, J.H. (2018). Health assessment in nursing (6th ed.). Philadelphia,
... [Show More] PA:
Wolters Kluwer.
• Chapter 33: Assessing Families
Lockhart, L. and Davis, C. (2014). Caring for nontraditional families. Nursing made incredibly easy. 12(6) 14-18. doi: 10.1097/01.NME.0000454747.95582.fa permalink (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.
Week 7 Discussion Post: Debriefing the Week 6 Head to Toe Assessment Assignment
In Week 6 you demonstrated a head to toe assessment of an adult participant. This week you and your classmates will reflect on physical assessment in your own nursing practice, and on the assessment you performed for your video assignment.
Please consider the following in your initial post:
1. Please share how physical assessment is performed in your practice area. How do you determine what type of physical assessment is appropriate in caring for your patients? Do you perform complete head to toe assessments, or are they typically more focused exams? (If you do not currently work in a patient care setting, you may reflect on observations from a clinical experience or prior work setting.)
• I feel like I have a unique perspective for this discussion post due to the fact I work in two separate departments on a regular basis. When I am working on the
medical/surgical floor I do a complete head to toe assessment on each patient with a full set of vitals. Throughout the shift I monitor the patient periodically then do an additional focused assessment halfway through my 12-hour shift.
• However, when I am working in emergency services, I rarely do a complete head to toe assessment, except for with trauma patients. Typically, I do a focused
assessment based off their chief complaint.
2. Based on your observations, do you feel that patient assessments performed in practice are as thorough as they should be? Explain your answer.
• Based on my observations, how thorough an assessment is dependent on the nurse conducting the assessment. I feel that should not be the case I feel like we need to
all thoroughly assess each patient, with the exception of emergency services. Emergency services is a completely different ball game, for instance as I was working on this assignment I was interrupted with a patient with a headache. I don’t need to do a full head to toe assessment on him. I need assess his head and neurological status, observe their gait during the walk to the room. But with no signs of distress there is no need for a complete assessment.
3. Reflect on the assessment you performed for the video assignment. Perhaps you might compare your performance now, to how it might have been different when you were a
brand new nurse? Or share something you learned (or were reminded of) by participating in this activity?
• I felt like my physical assessment I did for this assignment was very rushed and could use some improvements. I had personal conflicts this week which made me
put off the assignment until late in the week. However, I feel like there aspects of the physical assessment that were required for this assignment that we were not taught to be part of our physical assessment while in nursing school. I personally do not remember being taught to palpate the external nose, check the patency of airflow through nostrils, or to palpate the nodes. However, I do see the importance of assessing these areas and will be incorporating them into my physical assessment from now on. [Show Less]