preview

Assessment Of A Nursing Health Assessment

Good Essays

What is assessment? Assessment in nursing has been influenced by the problem-solving framework of the nursing process and nursing models. Assessment of need is fundamental to the care process and has received much attention in correspondence to the establishment of eligibility criteria for long-term care (RCN, 2004). A health assessment not only comprises of gathering health information about a patient, but also analyzing and synthesizing the information, and evaluating the effectiveness of nursing interventions on patients health care outcomes (Weber & Kelley, 2013). Assessment consists of both subjective and objective data. Subjective assessment is information provided from the patient such as their family history. Objective assessment includes information which is observable and measurable such as temperature or blood pressure (Jarvis 2008, cited in rn.com 2012: 3). The purpose of assessment The purpose of a nursing health assessment is to collect holistic, subjective and objective data to determine a patient’s overall health and well-being to establish a professional clinical judgement. The nurses collect physiological, psychological, developmental, spiritual and sociocultural information about the patient; therefore performing a holistic data collection (Weber & Kelley, 2013). Importance of assessment A nurse may be required to assess whether a patient’s treatment is successful by making reasonable judgements and ensuring a cost-effective method is established, in order

Get Access