QUESTION

• Define the term health assessment and briefly describe the major components of a health assessment;
• Identify and discuss the purpose of a health assessment from a nursing perspective
• Discuss how a health assessment might be conducted differently in TWO of the
• following situations with:
  • • · a child in a community setting (i.e., General practice or “well-baby” clinic);
    • · an adult in a hospital;
    • · an elderly person in an aged care facility.

                                                                     SAMPLE SOLUTION

Assessment is a critical part in medical intervention. In nursing practice, it aids the planning and provision of patient-centered care. As the first step in medical process, it buttresses integrated healthcare efforts by providing a focused way of responding to patients medical needs (Heilbrun, DeMatteo, Holliday, & LaDuke, 2014). Medical response routinely begins with a detailed assessment by nurses to ascertain the state of the patient before preferring medication.  This assignment discourses on healthcare assessment, in the context of nursing.  It ruminates on heath assessments and its components, purpose, and various contexts of application. In particular, this essay zooms in on two groups of patients: a child in a community setting and an adult in hospital.

The nature of health challenges continues evolving, ever requiring more focused response from medical practitioners. Nursing responses start with health assessment and proceeds to cover diagnosis of priority areas for action, planning healthcare programs to address the issues, implementation of planned activities, and evaluation of health outcomes (WHO, 2010). According to Wright and Leahey (2012), heath assessment is systematic, interdisciplinary, and inclusive process that collects and collates heath data in order to make decisions on most appropriate medical responses. A compete health assessment begins with obtaining a patient’s medical history. The aim of this process is to obtain chronological data on the patients’ health. Crucial data obtained include immunization status, congenital diseases, family health history, and known allergies. In order do this, the nurse identifies a suitable location, then proceeds to ask open-ended questions to extract as much information as possible. The preliminary data obtained from the first step then gives way to the more objective step of physical examination. This step yields objective data through four diagnostic techniques (Heilbrun, DeMatteo, Holliday, & LaDuke, 2014). Ordered from the most rudimentary to most sophisticated, these techniques are: inspection, palpation, percussion, and auscultation. Inspection, the first technique health assessment, is the use of senses of smell and vision to observe a patient (Wright & Leahey, 2012).

Visual inspection usually requires full exposure of the part under observation and may reveal anomalies information such as an abnormal pulse rate of say, 40 per minute (Leininger & McFarland, 2006). The nurse may also employ the use of her nose to reveal characteristic odor attributable to certain types of diabetes. The second assessment technique for patients is palpation. This technique involves the use of touch as a diagnostic tool, especially for abdominal pains in infants. The next method of assessment is percussion. The part under observation is assessed by striking it to obtain characteristic sounds for abnormality. Sounds from percussed body parts can provide vital information on internal organs such as presence of air, fluids and solids. Finally, the nurse may recommend Auscultation. This technique is the active listening of body organs for voluntary and involuntary sounds. Data from medical history and physical examination can used to generate medical reports and records. Such documentation can then form the basis of laboratory investigations (Morton, 2017). As the first step in the nursing process, patient assessment is a valuable tool for nursing professionals, as proper medical prescription is underpinned by good assessments.