Comprehensive and consistent patient assessment is the core of effective, personalized nursing care. When nursing professionals gather, sort and analyze health information using evidence-informed tools, they can learn more about their patient’s overall health, symptoms and concerns. As a result, nurses can guide attending physicians and medical professionals on how to approach and treat the individual.

Healthcare approaches vary from comprehensive and preventive to supportive and palliative concerning the patient’s health status. A comprehensive patient assessment is a care plan that determines a patient’s needs and strategies to address those complex health issues. This empowers patients and their loved ones to make informed decisions about their health and wellbeing.

This is especially important considering that a recent report suggests that roughly 40% of deaths happen due to health negligence. Thanks to in-depth assessments performed by forward-thinking nurses, patients remain proactive toward their health, allowing them to obtain medical provisions when necessary. Furthermore, patient assessments narrow diagnostic impressions and allow medical professionals to monitor treatment effectiveness.

What does a comprehensive patient assessment look like?

There are several components to a comprehensive patient assessment. Although the approach to performing a patient assessment will remain the same regardless of the patient’s age or health status, nurses must understand the nuances when conducting these evaluations, especially when dealing with different populations. For example, geriatric and pediatric patients or individuals with specific disease processes and family dynamics may require a more personalized approach.

This allows nurses to identify opportunities for preventive care and promote healthier lifestyles in different populations and demographics. A nurse will collect subjective and objective data during a patient assessment using evidence-informed tools to evaluate the patient. Depending on the nursing professional, a detailed patient evaluation may include:

• An environmental evaluation
• A cultural evaluation
• A physical evaluation
• A psychological evaluation
• A safety evaluation
• A psychosocial evaluation

However, before performing the following assessments, nurses must conduct an initial assessment to determine the origin and the nature of the health issue and use that information to conduct the tests mentioned above. This involves performing a physical exam, recording the patient’s vital signs and getting their medical history. Doing so empowers nurses to identify health risks early and create a patient-centered care plan.

Patient assessments empower nurses to provide high-quality care because of better documentation and staff communication. Common nursing assessments used in long-term care facilities and healthcare settings include the following.

Head-to-toe assessment

This assessment evaluates a patient’s health status for every central body system. It determines a patient’s needs and health concerns and is usually performed during primary care visits or yearly physical exams. The assessment duration will differ depending on the patient’s health and status.

Focused assessment

A focused assessment involves stabilizing and treating pain as required. Once the initial assessment is completed, nurses can determine the patient’s health concerns. They can then concentrate on treating them accordingly. This assessment is critical, as a patient’s health condition can change sporadically.

Time-lapsed assessment

After a nurse has diagnosed the patient’s health condition and implemented a personalized care plan, they will perform a time-lapsed assessment to examine their reaction to the treatment. Depending on the patient’s condition, this assessment can take a few hours or several months. Nurses must therefore constantly monitor and evaluate the patient closely throughout their stay to make regular comparisons using recorded results.

Emergency assessment

An emergency assessment is performed during critical procedures to assess the patient’s airway, circulation, breathing, and the cause of the problem. These assessments happen outside healthcare settings, with the nurse ensuring no adverse effects on other individuals during the emergency rescue procedure. If an emergency assessment is successful and the patient’s condition improves, nurses will continue to perform a focused assessment that tackles several healthcare aspects, including their medical history and family medical background.

How do nurses use health histories to assess patients?

Tracking a patient’s medical history can sometimes be overwhelming. However, done right, it can help nurses manage complex patient conditions, lower job stress and improve overall outcomes. With a patient’s comprehensive health history, nurses can quickly identify individuals who have a higher-than-usual chance of having common disorders such as cancer, stroke and high blood pressure.

Determine a patient’s unique needs

Patient-centered care has been the norm nowadays, and for a good reason. Nurses can ensure faster recovery, improve health outcomes, lower hospital readmissions and increase client satisfaction through effective patient-centered care. By considering a patient’s past and family medical history, nurses can get an all-encompassing view of their clients’ overall health and identify their unique needs.

Effective healthcare goes beyond a patient’s physical, emotional and social wellbeing and health. When nurses can refer to the patient’s past and family medical histories, they can inform and support the patient in identifying the course of action they will take. It also helps nurses to identify the procedures and treatments that the patient must undergo to treat complex or painful illnesses.

Nurses and other medical professionals are shooting blindly without considering a patient’s past and family medical history. In contrast, when medical professionals obtain this information, they can initiate treatment confidently, knowing that each base is covered and potential hiccups will be addressed before they become a full-blown problem.

Establish patient outcomes and goals

Engaging patients in meaningful discussions around goals of care is critical to providing patient-centered and individualized care. By establishing patient goals, nurses, physicians and other medical professionals can concentrate healthcare on the most critical outcomes for the patient. However, before establishing these goals, nurses must know the patient profoundly and understand their medical history.

Obtaining this information empowers nurses to assess patients objectively and deliver a treatment plan that considers factors such as family history. Nurses cannot change a patient’s genetic makeup. However, knowing their medical history allows the nurse to help the patient reduce the risk of developing health problems. This is especially important for patients with chronic disorders, as lifestyle choices, environmental conditions and genetic factors influence these diseases.

Too often, the only goals established for patients are standard clinical objectives set for every client. This can ultimately backfire, considering that every patient is different, even if they suffer similar illnesses. Considering patients’ and their families’ medical histories in healthcare assessments empowers nurses to manage illnesses effectively and help their clients achieve essential outcomes.

Identify potential barriers to care

Nurses face the challenge of motivating patients to change their behaviors when treating specific health conditions. However, before motivating, let alone changing patient behaviors, they must identify potential barriers to care. Patients encounter numerous barriers to care that prevent them from making significant lifestyle and health changes.

Using a patient’s medical history, nurses can examine the potential barriers to dig deeper into the concern. This is especially helpful when a patient develops a new symptom or experiences a status change. Moreover, past medical histories provide nurses with a detailed review of the patient’s lifelong risk profile and the influence of familial, sociological and cultural attributes on these healthcare barriers.

Take familial attributes, for example. Families with similar genetic backgrounds often follow similar lifestyles and live in the same environments. Together, these factors can provide nurses with an overview of potential barriers and clues to their patient’s family conditions. Identifying these disorder patterns allows nurses to determine whether an individual, family member or future generations will face an increased risk of developing a specific condition.

How can nurses improve their patient assessment skills?

Patient health assessments are critical in monitoring a care plan’s status change and goal progression. For nurses to conduct accurate patient assessments, they must have strong attention to detail and an in-depth understanding of body systems. Although there is no substitute for field experience, nurses can develop quality patient assessment skills in several ways.

Establish a patient assessment routine and stick to it

Consistent assessment is essential in maintaining patient safety and improving overall health outcomes. To deliver consistent patient assessment, nurses must establish a routine to thrive in times of stress, uncertainty and unpredictability. Moreover, developing a patient assessment pattern allows nurses to ensure a thorough evaluation.

An excellent way is to start with a systematic approach when conducting patient assessments to ensure that nurses stay aware of the details. Alternatively, nurses can gather information from multiple sources to paint the clinical picture. This allows nurses to define the needs assessment objectives of their patients, cast a wide net, and rule out problems. Letting go of some possibilities will narrow the investigation to the actual cause of the patient’s disease or illness, reducing overall recovery time.

Recognize the little signs

Little signs can often lead to big things when assessing your patients. Not catching these little warning signs can cause further harm and result in it being too late for a patient to recover. While there are several ways to do it, you can begin by noting everything, regardless of how small or insignificant it seems.

If a minor symptom appears to be nothing, jot it down and inform the attending physician regarding your observation. After all, it is better to be proven correct later than to ignore it and potentially misdiagnose a patient. By using available medical information, nurses can analyze and make assessments to improve the patient’s condition.

Keep learning

Continuous learning is essential in the medical field as the industry evolves and adapts to the changes brought by technology and circumstances. Good patient assessment requires a willingness to be a perpetual student. One option is to enroll in an advanced nursing degree program at a leading academic institution such as the University of Indianapolis (UIndy), where you can get assigned to an MSN clinical placement in Indianapolis. To find out more about the UIndy MSN-AGPCNP program, which is in a part-time, online format, visit the university’s website, linked to above.

Performing health assessments will be more effective if nurses have well-developed physical examination skills such as auscultation and percussion. They must also know which findings are within normal limits and those that require further investigation. By enrolling in an advanced nursing course, nurses can gain the solid foundation and extensive clinical expertise required to master the physical skills of patient assessment.

However, before you enroll in an advanced nursing program, you must consider factors such as choosing the right academic institution and nursing accreditations. Ensuring that your chosen nursing program has the necessary accreditation guarantees that the education you will get is high quality. This is because an accredited nursing degree has undergone costly and rigorous assessment processes that prove that the curriculum has met the applicable standards set by top accrediting organizations, such as the US Secretary of Education and the Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education (CCNE).

Communicate with patients 

Fostering an interactive relationship with your patients is one of the best ways to improve your patient assessment skills. This means explaining what you are doing and why, and mentioning how the assessment can enhance their health. When patients are valued and seen as unique individuals, nurses can increase their likelihood of openly expressing their symptoms and health concerns.

While patient testimony is subjective, it can help nurses identify patterns in patient experiences and trends in the way that symptoms progress, and discover critical information they would not know otherwise. This also allows nurses to find better opportunities to improve patient care and measurably enhance healthcare delivery. Through patient-centered communication, nurses can help patients cope with the distressing trip to the hospital and obtain a complete medical history.

Using comprehensive and detailed patient histories to improve healthcare delivery

Improving healthcare delivery is no longer a buzzword in today’s healthcare circles, especially with the growing significance of patient-centered medical care. Nurses and medical professionals can use a patient’s comprehensive medical history to cover all the bases, address potential issues and improve healthcare delivery.

As a disability support worker, you grow to better understand your participants’ individual needs. Whether they live largely independently or require a little extra assistance, each individual is different and, consequently, there are different roles for each participant.

However, there are some general top tips that you, the carer, can incorporate to optimise your awesome service. It may be that your participant requires one, a couple, or none of these bits of advice, but they are here as a references if you need them:

Help them to live independently

 When it comes to the best disability home care Wollongong has, it is important to help your participant live as independently as possible. An unfortunate drawback for participants in this service is that they may sometimes feel unempowered, especially if the carer works too hard to do everything for them.

As such, we promote helping your participants live as independently as possible wherever they see fit. This may include things like facilitating their financial matters, helping them organise social catch ups without assistance, go do their own grocery shopping – wherever they want to live independently in a suitable manner is always a good thing for your participant’s self-confidence!

Be sure to ask before giving assistance

Coming back to the last point, one of the key ways to ensure you’re not running the risk of becoming overbearing is to ask your participant if they need any assistance before offering it. It may be that they feel and are perfectly capable of handling a particular role by themselves, so it’s always a good idea to ensure they actually require any assistance before stepping in!

Encourage social events

Wollongong is a city that is replete with fun social events in which to partake. Whether it’s in the arts, community activities, sports or something completely different, our city is one that has plenty going on at all times of the year.

If your participant would like to try something new – like a new hobby or social event – then feel free to assist them in making this happen! Whether that means helping them find and sign up for a new activity, assisting them to the event or helping them practise in their own time, there are plenty of ways you can help your participant start their journey to a new and rewarding venture!

Help them around the home

It can be that a person living with a disability has a difficult time completing a certain role around the house. Whether that is cooking a meal or a particular cleaning duty, there can be certain limitations that inhibit the individual from completing a particular task.

As such, one of your primary roles as a caregiver is to provide assistance with such duties around the home. Whether it is tackling the gardening, making a particular meal or assisting in cleaning duties, there may be some particular roles that require a little extra assistance.

Treat your participant as you would anyone else!

Your role is primarily to offer assistance where suitable, as such you don’t need to treat your participant any differently than you would other people! There is no need to be patronising or overly-sympathetic in this role: it’s just about helping your participant get by wherever they may need some assistance.

These are five simple tips to follow when providing care for your participant. Feel free to use them as a reference if you ever feel the need!

Human life expectancy has reached an all-time high with the support of modern treatments and medicines to overcome many health challenges. A recent resource developed by Avantor walks you through a journey of life sciences and the key developments that helped us get to where we are today. Here are six critical developments that have pushed our healthcare industry into the modern era.

1909: The First Pharmaceutical Treatment

The medical industry we had one hundred years ago pales compared to today’s industry. The early medical discoveries of the 1900s helped lay tremendous foundational work for the development of today’s advanced medical field. One of the first discoveries that ushered in a new era of medical advancements was the development of the first pharmaceutical treatment designed for Syphilis. Syphilis is a disabling sexually transmitted disease that could be fatal if left untreated. Paul Ehrlich developed this cure accidentally while attempting to discover a drug that could kill germs upon entering the body.

1918: The Spanish Flu

The widespread Spanish Flu set the groundwork for future pandemics but also showed us how little we know about the disease and how to combat viruses. This was the first outbreak that mandated a widespread ‘lockdown’ to combat the spread of the disease and saw people wearing masks in public as it was made illegal to spit, cough, or sneeze in public. The Spanish Flu outbreak pushed the medical world towards rapid innovation as researchers worldwide attempted to fight the disease and began experimenting with new treatments and vaccines.

1928: Penicillin

The discovery of penicillin was integral for the future of healthcare. Penicillin was accidentally discovered by Sir Alexander Fleming when he left Petri dishes out that grew mold, which fought certain bacteria within the dishes. The development of penicillin is essential in our fight against infectious diseases. Penicillin wasn’t mass-produced until the 1940s.

1952: Cardiovascular Pacemaker

The mid-1900s saw many improvements in previously discovered treatments and the development of more in-depth research and care methods. Creating the first cardiovascular pacemaker was a crucial moment in our healthcare history. This was one of many developments in medical engineering during this period. The pacemaker could be implanted and run automatically without needing an out-of-body hand crank to power up the machine. Pacemakers remain an essential part of cardiovascular care and treatments today.

2000s Stem Cell Research

Stem cells have been used in medical research since the 1980s, but it wasn’t till the early 2000s that they began being used in treatments. Stem cells can be used in regenerative medicine to heal previously irreparably damaged cells and can even be used in cancer treatments. Stem cell research has the potential to help us cure many degenerative diseases and much more.

2008: mRNA Vaccines

The development of mRNA vaccines is profound in the life sciences. Messenger RNA can be deployed to help program the body’s immune system to fight certain diseases. This technology was first used in 20008 to treat melanoma patients. Avantor notes that the vaccine method was “so successful in fighting a tricky disease like cancer that we will see this advancement in vaccine technology used again, over a decade later.” The COVID-19 pandemic presented a new opportunity for mRNA technology to develop new vaccines rapidly.

The modern healthcare system would not be what it is today without these critical developments in the life sciences. Via Avantor, you may learn about many more significant events in the history of the life sciences as well as individuals like Anne McLaren who made significant contributions to science in a variety of ways. Understanding the history of our healthcare system and the timeline of discoveries can help you make informed decisions about your health and gain insight into the research currently being developed within the healthcare industry.