Clinical Assessment & Decisions

First official day of the semester today. I had a two hour lecture for my Clinical Assessment & Decisions subject which was about Health Assessment Frameworks and Clinical Nursing Processes. This is also one of the topics I've been reading up on over the last week.

A few of the main points are (this is my own summary btw, not directly copied):

When assessing a patient nurses consider not only physical variables to health but also things such as psychosocial, sociocultural, developmental, spiritual, environmental, etc.

The assessment generally begins with an interview about biographical data, current general health and reason for seeking care, health history, family health history, current medication, drug use (incl. alcohol, caffeine and cigarettes), family/roles/relationships/support network, work, leisure, nutrition and elimination, sleep, exercise and mobility, stress, and the list goes on. This is all subjective data because it is given by the patient.

After that, a physical examination by the nurse will reveal some objective data. The focus of the physical examination will depend on the perceived problem. One the nurse has collected enough information they can make diagnoses and start planning and implementing treatment.

Nursing diagnoses are about human reactions to health issues, which is different from a medical diagnosis. For example, rather than diagnosing emphysema (which would be the doctor's diagnosis), a nurse would diagnose "difficulty breathing" and plan and implement ways to help the patient breathe more easily. Medical diagnoses are relatively the same from person to person whereas nursing diagnoses are based on the patient's physical, sociocultural, psychological and spiritual response to an illness or health problem. The can be actual problems that need to be treated right away or potential problems that need to be prevented/monitored for. The responses vary from person to person depending on their state of being.

The last step is evaluation before the whole process is repeated again.

The lecturer was in Bendigo and it was by video teleconferencing. There were actually two lecture theatres at my campus due to the number of students, as well as ones in Shepparton, Mildura, and Albury-Wodonga. You could see all the different people up on the screen. It was kind of strange but I guess I'll get used to it.

I also did some reading today on Perioperative nursing (preparing a patient for surgery) and Pharmokinetics (the study of the factors determining the amount of a drug at a site where it can exert a biological effect at various times afer its administration into a biologic system).