Health Assessment

• Health Assessment is a distinct phase assessment by which the nurse analyzes and synthesizes collected information in order to make judgment about health status or determine a person’s needs for nursing care.
• Holistic Nursing Assessment is a comprehensive body of information obtained from the client and other sources, including information on the client as a whole, the health/illness status, past and present, social and physical environment, and past interaction with other healthcare system.
• Holistic Nursing Assessment determines the patient’s health status, risk factors, and need for education as a basis for developing a nursing plan of care.
• Physiologic phenomena and psychosocial aspects influence perception of pain.
• Decreased cognitive function, increased vital signs, and autonomic alterations affecting body systems are common responses to pain.
• Anxiety, fear, hopelessness, sleeplessness, and suicidal ideation are common responses to pain.
• Acute Pain, Chronic Nonmalignant Pain, Cancer Pain, Intractable Pain, Cutaneous Pain, Visceral Pain, Deep Somatic Pain, and Phantom Pain are different types of pain.
• Social Determinants of Health consider social determinants of health (SDOH) that affect a person’s health, risks and outcomes.
• Physical examination, validation and congruence, and pain assessment tool are important aspects of pain management.
• Nursing is one of the Fine Arts: I had almost said, the finest of Fine Arts.
• Expertise in communicating requires more than knowledge or ability to rote-perform skills; it involves attitudes, life skills, and experience.
• Nursing is an art and if it is to be made an art, it requires an exclusive devotion as hard a preparation, as any painter's or sculptor's work; for what is the having to do with dead canvas or dead marble, compared with having to do with the living body, the temple of God's spirit?
• Social determinants of health (SDOH) are the nonmedical factors that influence health outcomes.
• Social determinants of health (SDOH) are the conditions in which people are born, grow, work, live, and age, and the wider set of forces and systems shaping the conditions of daily life.
• Holistic Nursing Assessment is used in conjunction with the physical examination and laboratory findings as a basis for drawing conclusions about an individual’s state of health.
• Types of health assessment include initial comprehensive assessment, on-going or partial assessment, focused or problem-oriented assessment, and emergency assessment.
• Pain is whatever the person says it is, according to McCaffery and Pasero, 1999.
• Blood Pressure is the measurement of the pressure of the blood in the arteries when the ventricles contract (systolic pressure) and when the ventricles relax (diastolic pressure), with systolic pressure <120mmHg and diastolic pressure <80mmHg.
• An initial comprehensive assessment is a comprehensive assessment generally done upon admission to a healthcare setting, and the data in a comprehensive assessment is what ultimately influences the care plan.
• Pain is a subjective experience that can objectively be validated, which we primarily associate with tissue damage or describe in terms of such damage, according to the International Association for the Study of Pain, 2011.
• Religion is defined as rituals, practices and experiences shared within a group that involve a search for the sacred.
• Respirations are the rise and fall of the chest with each breath, with a rate between 12-20 breaths/min.
• Cultural competence encompasses the totality of socially transmitted behavioural patterns, arts, beliefs, values, customs, life ways, and all other products of human work and thought characteristic of a population or people.
• Reported age is a noninvasive physical assessment procedure that reflects the status of several body systems including cardiovascular, neurologic, peripheral vascular, and respiratory systems.
• Cultural awareness, cultural skill, cultural knowledge, cultural encounter, cultural desire, and cultural assessment are factors to consider in cultural competence.
• An on-going or partial assessment is conducted at regular intervals while caring for the patient.
• Pulse is a shockwave produced by the heart as it contracts to deliver blood as it travels along the arteries, with a rate between 60-100 beats/min.
• Ethnicity, generational status, educational level, religion, previous health experiences, occupation and income level, beliefs about time and space, communication needs and preferences are factors to consider in cultural assessment.
• Pulse pressure is the difference between the systolic and diastolic, which is the difference between the measurement of the blood pressure when the ventricles contract and when the ventricles relax.
• An environment that fosters hope, joy and creativity is an essential part of spiritual history.
• Temperature is an approximate core body temperature that can be taken at varied anatomic sites between 36.5ºC-37.7ºC, with the lowest early in the morning and highest late in the evening.
• Norms are constructs of cultural competence.
• Values are constructs of cultural competence.
• A sense of value, trust, respect, worth, and dignity is essential in spiritual history.
• A focused or problem-oriented assessment is conducted to assess a specific health problem.
• Beliefs and behaviors associated with health and illness, comparing and contrasting practice with current health practices, comparing client with cultural standards, assessing clients health versus disease prevalence are factors to consider in cultural assessment.
• Religion and spirituality relates to a person’s greater sense of well-being in the face of chronic disease management and the ability to adhere to medical regimens.
• Spirituality is defined as a search for meaning and purpose in life, seeking to understand life’s ultimate questions in relation to the sacred.
• Cultural competence involves assessing spirituality and religious practices.
• An emergency assessment is a type of rapid formal assessment conducted to determine potentially fatal or life-threatening situations, focusing on airway, breathing, circulation, and disability.