QUESTION
Nursing Assessment Procedures
What assessment methods do you employ in your daily nursing practice?
ANSWER
Nursing is a profession that requires not only critical thinking but also creative skills in order to work and deliver at the highest level. A nurse has a significant duty that should be taken seriously because they play a larger role in patient treatment and healing processes. One of the skills that most nurses are learning these days is the assessment process, which is quickly becoming a daily routine and a strategy for making a nurse’s job easier (Wu, et al, 2015 p351). Assessment is a significant component of nursing practice that serves as a full requirement for planning and providing comprehensive patient and family care. The main assessment processes that I use are admission assessment, shift assessment, and focused assessment.
Are the processes more of a systems checklist, or do they truly involve information synthesis that requires reflection and critical thinking?
As obvious as the assessment processes appear and sound, the main requirement for the processes is a reflection of past and present history, as well as critical thinking. Using admission assessment as an example, the process encompasses the entire patient’s history, including past and present history, general appearance, and physical examination of the patient (Toney-Butler, & Unison-Pace, 2019). The Shift Assessment process covers the changes that the patient exhibits at each shift and if the patient’s condition changes frequently, necessitating the shift assessment process in order to assess those changes. Finally, focus assessment addresses overall body systems that are related to the patient’s current situation.
How can you reconsider personal habits and cognitive processes while ensuring critical thinking is included in the assessment process?
Personal habits are not an option in the nursing profession because this is a critical job that requires complete concentration. It is important to note that the practice of nursing necessitates clinically related thinking and reasoning in the overall clinical setting. As a result, personal habits will not be an option for me because critical thinking is required to properly define the patient’s problem and make reliable and effective choices in the delivery of care (Toney-Butler, & Unison-Pace, 2019).
