Nursing health assessment can be define as the assessment carried out by health professionals such as nurses in any medical field to identify the sickness or any problem faced by an individual who is seeking for health care. Another definition can be the “collection of data about an individual’s health state” (Jarvis, 2008, pg; 2). The main purpose of undertaking nursing assessment is to make judgments and diagnosis about the individual’s health state or maximum level of health and wellness. Along with that, it also allows the nurse to collect the data for the client. Assessment is further divided into two perspectives which distinguish the identity and the roles of any professional worker and they are: nursing health assessment …show more content…
Without such roles, the nurse won’t be able to carry out the assessment in an effective way. Roles such as:
• The nurse needs to obtain client’s consent earlier to health assessment. Without the client’s consent, the health assessment cannot be carried out. Being a professional nurse it is vital to seek for the client’s permission first. For example, nurse should ask consent from the client to palate the body or carry out physical assessment.
• Nurse has to keep confidentiality about the data being collected from his or her client. In this manner, the nurse is showing respect towards the client and it is also an important tool to show caring and compassion towards an individual. Maintain privacy and confidentiality will allow the client to open up to the nurse. A good example can be, a client with HIV/AIDs is identified by the nurse and the doctor and to build a good rapport, it is important to maintain …show more content…
Location – nurses has to identify the location of where the pain is by gently asking the client to point out the specific site of it. The example of this is when the patient point the site of the pain in the stomach whether it’s on the right or left.
2. Intensity of symptoms - it describes the strong and the depth of the pain in order to verify the symptoms. For example, nurses may ask questions such as “where the pain lies from scale 1-10?”. This will allow the nurse to identify further symptoms.
3. Quality of symptoms- it is shows the severity of the pain if it’s in pain assessment because different individual express pain in different ways where some described it’s a “terrible pain” while some does not. For example, a headache patient will describe different type of pain from the spinal injury patient.
4. Timing – this allows the nurse to gather the period that the pain has been with him/her. For example, a patient with a chief complaint of chest pain and the nurse may ask “How does it occur” and also “how long does it last” and many more.
5. Relieving factor – methods used to relieve the pain. The nurse may ask the patient “what have been taken to relieve the pain”. This is just to clarify with the nurse of the medication or anything that helps the patient to relieve the pain. For example, diabetic patient will have different method to relieve pain from the headache