Title: End of Module 1 / Beginning of Module 2
Course: HEALTH ASSESSMENT 80FA20

Great discussions from Module 1 about your favorite health assessment story. All of your stories had at least one thing in common, the importance of assessing your patient. All of your stories proved that it doesn’t matter the setting that we are in, our assessment skills can truly be life or death for our patient. Some of my favorite assessment stories come from my students now. I love the excitement of the generic nursing student who finds an open wound that no one else found or the ones that pick up on an abnormal lab that hasn’t been addressed yet. I try to instill in them the importance of this course in their nursing career.

In Sherpath, you learned about interviewing basics that includes cultural considerations and the components of the patient health history. You also learned about nutrition. Personally, I feel that nutrition is a topic that we don’t get enough education in and we sometimes tend to educate our patients with little or broad information. I will never forget a patient that was newly diagnosed with diabetes type 2 and the physician told her to “avoid things that are white”. This was all the info he gave her. I have heard nurses tell people to avoid things that are white like bread, rice and potatoes, but there is so much more to this. I also recall a patient who was discharged home s/p open heart surgery. He was told to eat grilled chicken instead of fried. When I assessed his nutritional status on maybe day 2 or 3 home, he was eating grilled chicken sandwiches from McDonald’s. In his mind, he was following his diet. I suppose compared to what he was eating before it was still better.  We must do better with our knowledge on diet and nutrition so that we can empower our patients to understand how important nutrition is in their disease process management. Personally, I feel that with each patient assessment that we complete, we have the opportunity to educate our patient.

Moving on to Module 2…

In Module 2, we will review growth and measurement to include: patient history, assessing growth, variations in growth assessment and findings in growth and measurement. We will also review skin, hair and nails to include: patient history with skin, hair and nails; assessing skin, hair and nails; and the findings for skin, hair and nails.  Your discussion posting this week will include documentation of your skin, hair and nails assessment.  Don’t forget that your initial posting is due by Friday and your response to peers is due by Sunday at midnight.  You will also see that the Ethnogeriatric Case Study Paper is listed on your calendar for this week.  This assignment is due in Week 6, but it is a lengthy assignment and you should begin as soon as possible.  I have also included the optional draft date, which I highly encourage you to plan to submit. One additional thing that I have added to the course is that we use one of our discussion boards to work on the Ethnogeriatric Case Study. Students really liked that they were able to get insight and guidance into the assignment prior to submitting.

As always, if you have any questions please contact me via the Discussion Posting for the Instructor, email or text.  I will also be happy to set up a Zoom meeting with you as well if needed.  Have a great week!

Dr. Ventura