Health Assessment (n317)
Course Number: 317
Credits: 4
Prerequisites: Current RN license. There is no formal lab component with this course. However, students will need to use a friend, colleague or family member to practice the assessment skills. Each of the assessments will be evaluated by completion of correct documentation, case studies, and/or quiz evaluations. In addition, students will be encouraged to work with an experienced nurse colleague who will be helpful in skill development and giving feedback on emerging skills.
Course Description
An introductory, four-credit course for registered nurses emphasizing the skills essential to the assessment aspects of the nursing process. The course purpose is to broaden learners' knowledge base, and increase their assessment skills and their ability to recognize the wide range of "normal" health status in a clinical setting. The knowledge from this course is immediately applicable to everyday patient care.
Course Objectives
The objective of this course is to provide students with the necessary skills in their clinical settings to do the following:
- Apply basic critical-thinking skills used in the nursing assessment.
- Accurately obtain all components of the health history. Differentiate between the history taking of patients based on cultural or development differences.
- Construct a nutritional history of a patient.
- Discuss how the basic mental status of a patient can be evaluated and how it affects the health history.
- Identify how a patient's pain status can be evaluated.
- Manipulate and correctly operate certain instruments required in carrying out a physical examination.
- Begin to differentiate among the wide range of normal and grossly abnormal findings throughout the physical examination of a client.
- Perform a systematic physical examination on a client for each body system.
- Record the findings of the health history and physical assessment.