What assessment processes do you use in your daily nursing practice?
Nursing is a career that not only requires critical thinking but also creative skills in order to work and deliver to the best level. A nurse has a significant duty that should be highly considered since they are the ones who plays a bigger role when it comes to patient treatment and healing processes. One of the skills that most nurses are adopting nowadays is known as the assessment process on which it is now becoming a daily routine and a strategy that makes the work of a nurse easier (Wu, et al, 2015 p351). Assessment can be defined as a significant component of nursing practice that acts as a full requirement for planning and providing full patient and family care. The major assessment processes that I utilize include the admission assessment, shift assessment, and Focused assessment processes.
Are the processes more of a systems checklist or do they truly involve the synthesis of information that involves reflection and critical thinking?
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As much as the assessment processes look and sound so obvious, a reflection of past and present history as well as critical thinking is the main requirement for the processes. Considering the admission assessment as the first example, the process covers the entire patient's history including past and present history and general appearance as well as physical examination of the patient (Toney-Butler, & Unison-Pace, 2019). The other assessment process is the Shift Assessment which covers the changes that the patient shows at each shift and if the patient's condition changes over and over therefore requiring the shift assessment process in order to assess those changes. Finally, focus assessment deals with overall body systems that relate to the current situation that the patient is suffering from.
How can you reconsider personal habits and cognitive processes and make sure to include critical thinking in the assessment process?
Considering the fact that this is a critical job that requires total concentration, personal habits are not an option in the nursing career. It is important to note that the practice of nursing requires thinking and reasoning that is clinically related to the overall clinical setting. Therefore personal habit will not be an option for me since critical thinking is what is required in order to properly define the patient's problem and make reliable and effective choices in the delivery of care (Toney-Butler, & Unison-Pace, 2019).
References
Wu, X. V., Enskär, K., Lee, C. C. S., & Wang, W. (2015). A systematic review of clinical assessment for undergraduate nursing students. Nurse Education Today, 35 (2), 347-359.
Toney-Butler, T. J., & Unison-Pace, W. J. (2019). Nursing admission assessment and examination . StatPearls Publishing.
