Nursing Assessment Tools

Comprehensive assessments is the most valuable piece which allows Nurse Practitioners to know about the health risks, strengths and needs of their patients. Furthermore, the comprehensive assessment strengths the relationship between the Nurse Practitioners and their patients. From clinician-patients relationship, it helps a complete assessment to answer patients questions which in the long run help to achieve measurable goals and provide quality outcomes to the patients. Nurse Practitioners use comprehensive assessment approach to analyze, interpret, implement and follow up care to ensure their patients receive appropriate care and prevent inappropriate diagnosis. Comprehensive assessment is where the patients are encourage to

The majority population of long-term health facilities is comprised of geriatric patients with complex comorbidities. Studies show that one-third of these patients have cognitive impairments, and over one-half have physical limitations (Tjia, Bonner, Briesacher, McGee, Terrill & Miller, 2009). It is important to know geriatric patients have increased vulnerabilities. When patients are poor historians and family is unavailable, the nurse often becomes their only advocate during facility admissions. Adequate discharge planning is imperative for patient safety and successful transitions from hospitals to long-term care facilities. It is the equal responsibility of both care

The knowledge of nursing sensitive indicator can be helpful in providing the patient care which meets the quality and ethical standards. Nursing sensitive indicators rely on evidence to take patient care decisions (Patrician, 2010). According to Patrician (2010), Evidence Based Nursing is the use of personal expertise and research to take decisions on patient care. In case of Mr. J, there is a clear lack of evidence based nursing. Mr. J was kept in restraint without considering that Mr. J was not trying to get out of bed by himself. When the pressure ulcer was identified, the nurse

The patient is a 45 year old man who had GI surgery 4 days ago.  He is NPO, has a nasogastric tube, and IV fluids of D51/2saline at 100 mL/hr.  The nursing physical assessment includes the following:  alert and oriented; fine crackles; capillary refill within normal limits; moving all extremities, complaining of abdominal pain, muscle aches, and "cottony" mouth; dry mucous membranes, bowel sounds hypoactive, last BM four days ago; skin turgor is poor; 200 mL of dark green substance has drained from NG tube in last 3 hours.  Voiding dark amber urine without difficulty.  Intake for last 24 hours is 2500mL.  Output is 2000mL including urine and NG drainage.  Febrile and diaphoretic; BP 130/80; pulse 88; urine specific gravity 1.035; serum

Nursing process is a systematic process that involves a continuous cycle of five interrelated phases: holistic assessment of a client, nursing diagnoses, nursing care planning, implementation, and evaluation (Wilkinson et al. 2015). It enables nurses to assess the person’s health status and health care needs, to create plans to meet the identified needs, and to provide and evaluate individualised nursing interventions according to the person’s needs (Luxford 2015). The holistic assessment is the first step of the nursing process that includes the collection of subjective and objective data related to the physical, psychological, social, developmental, cultural, and spiritual status of a client (Wilkinson et al. 2015). This comprehensive approach to nursing assessment is essential because it allows nurses to comprehend not only clients’ health status, but also their routines and needs in order to incorporate their life-styles into the care interventions (Luxford 2015). It ultimately enables nurses to provide appropriate quality person-centred care rather than nurse-initiated care (Luxford 2015). Responsibility for holistic nursing assessment is supported by the Registered nurse standards for practice (2016), ‘Standard 4.1: The registered nurse conducts assessments that are holistic as well as culturally appropriate’ (Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia [NMBA] 2016, p. 4). This essay will discuss the elements and the importance of holistic assessment in nursing.

This piece of work will be based on the pre-assessment process that patients go through on arrival to an endoscopy unit in which I was placed in during my second year studying Adult diploma Nursing. I will explore one patient’s holistic needs, identifying the priorities of care that the patient requires; I will then highlight a particular priority and give a rational behind this. During an admission I completed under the supervision of my mentor I was pre-assessing a 37 year old lady who had arrived to the unit for an upper gastrointestinal endoscopy. During the pre-assessment it was important that a holistic assessment is performed as every patient is an individual with unique care needs as the patient outline in this piece of work has

Nursing sensitive indicators reflect the structure, process and outcomes of nursing care. The structure of nursing care is indicated by many factors such as supply of staff, education level and quality of care provided. Process indicators measure aspects of nursing care such as assessment, intervention, and RN job satisfaction. Patient outcomes that are determined to be nursing sensitive are those that improve if there is a greater quantity or quality of nursing care (Nursing world, 2013). In 1999, the American Nursing Association recognized a total of 10 indicators that apply to hospital based nursing care (Americansentinel.edu, 2017). Indicator such as pressure ulcers, patient falls and nosocomial infections are recognized in this list and are considered preventable with proper nursing action. Knowledge of these indicators could have assisted the nurses in several ways involving this case study involving Mr. J.

I am pleased to state that I have been a registered nurse for forty years. At this moment, I continue working in nursing while pursuing my Bachelor of Science in Nursing degree. My intended month of completion is October 2012. My experience in nursing education has motivated me to continue my education and pursue a Masters degree in a nursing related field commencing in 2013. Thus, in terms of my career planning, my education is a crucial part to my professional development. Extending and deepening one's education, especially within the career field of one's choice, can only bring upon additional professional opportunities as well as opportunities for personal growth. My career planning includes building upon my decades of experience in obstetrics, my particular area of specialty, expertise, and passion, with the assistance and addition of higher education. I believe in terms of career planning, my strengths include foresight, preparation, internal motivation, and focus.

Practice development is a process of providing care to the patient that leads to direct measurable improvement in care by identifying an issue providing effective care of service and creating a scenario for feedback of previous interventions. It is more focused on patient centered care. In this case study, I am going to explore an issue medication error which is one of the hindrance for practice development. While defining medication errors, it is the unwanted event carried out by health professional or patient providing the wrong medicine for the use which my harm and become hazardous for health. In hospital settings, it is frequently occurring because of patient identification error.

How often, and under what circumstances, do you ask questions that start with “But what if…?” or “It depends…?”

The national league for nurses defines critical thinking in the nursing process as “a discipline specific, reflective reasoning process that guides a nurse in generating, implementing, and evaluating approaches for dealing with client care and professional concerns” (Kozier, 2008). This definition is imperative to help a nursing student learn how to think in terms of nursing care. Nursing students must achieve a comprehensive understanding of critical thinking in order to understand the nursing process. The purpose for this paper is for nursing students to learn how to use the nursing process, how to properly document their findings and assessments, and correctly implement APA formatting in a formal paper.

Lily was a 65 year old lady with stage 5 CKD, she had recently begun hemodialysis treatment three times a week as an inpatient and had been responding well to treatment. During dialysis treatment on the morning of the first day, Lily’s observations showed that she was: tachycardic, hypotensive, tachypnoeaic, had an oxygen saturation level of 88% and was becoming confused and drowsy. It became apparent that Lily had become hypovolaemic. The hypovolaemic shock seen in this patient was of a particular critical nature due to the fact that her dialysis treatment had moved her rapidly through the first two stages of shock with her compensatory mechanisms failing very quickly (Tait, 2012). It was also much harder to identify the early signs of

Assessment of a patient is a big process of decision making, it is about the collection of information which will contribute to an overall judgement of a person and the illness they may have. Lloyd (2010) states that assessment is one of the first steps which is needed to be done in the nursing process, it is a building block for a relationship and an ongoing process which lets health professionals gather the correct information to help them understand the problems and needs that the patient is going through. Most of the nursing assessment which are in use today will all have very similar aims. The difference is that how the assessment’s are carried out is where the differences come from.

Nurses are a vital component in patient care. The importance of conducting efficient nursing assessments is critical in order to provide both patient-centered care and safe, effective patient healing. Nurses are often responsible for taking care of patients with very complex disease processes. They frequently provide care to patients with illnesses such as Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD). According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in 2014, approximately 6.8 million adults were diagnosed with COPD within the Unites States. The completion of proper assessments and initiation of interventions for these patients are crucial in order to prevent further complications of the illness.

This essay will evaluate the extent to which assessment is a fundamental component which adult nurses should adhere to in their everyday practice. In doing so, it will reflect on the bio psychosocial aspects of assessment and in particular the increased emphasis placed on holistic and evidence based-practice. It will give an insight on different types of assessment such as physical, risk and spiritual and various types of assessment tools used to facilitate with this process. It will also analyse why nurses commonly apply a nursing framework or model to organise the data obtained to form a health assessment.