Assignment: Advanced Health Assessment

Assignment: Advanced Health Assessment

A Sample Answer For the Assignment: Assignment: Advanced Health Assessment

Title: Assignment: Advanced Health Assessment

Health assessment is a systematic, purposeful, and interactive process where nurses apply critical thinking to analyze and synthesize collected patient information. Health assessment helps in recognizing patients’ strengths in promoting health and in identifying patients’ needs and clinical problems (Thornbory, 2013). Through health assessment, the patient’s responses to health problems and interventions are evaluated. This paper will give a reflection of my experience when conducting a mental health assessment on Ms. Tina Jones.

I conducted a thorough health assessment that obtained vital information on the chief complaints, history of presenting illness, family history, and social history. The history-taking helped in identifying contributing factors, relieving factors, and areas of health promotion. I also took a detailed review of systems that helped in identifying symptoms not mentioned in the chief complaint and coming up with differential diagnoses.

Nevertheless, I had a challenge asking relevant questions at the appropriate time. I jumbled up some of the questions by asking them at the wrong time, which made the interview disorganized to some extent. In my future assessments, I will follow an order when taking history and ensure that I have asked all the possible questions in every category before heading to the next one.

Positive findings from the health assessment include sleep disturbances, fatigue, irritability, restlessness, and difficulty maintaining concentration. The patient also had generalized anxiety, a low mood, and a feeling of helplessness, which contributed to a decline in school performance alongside other symptoms.

The question on aggravating factors helped to understand what exacerbated insomnia and anxiety episodes and factors that may have contributed to Insomnia. Question on relieving factors yielded vital information on the techniques the patient used to alleviate the symptoms and their effectiveness. It also helped to diagnose the underlying issue and to identify the treatment measures. In addition, the question of how the lack of sleep affected the patient’s daily life gave information on the severity of the symptoms and helped to diagnose and manage the condition.

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I would order a urine drug test to help identify if the patient’s symptoms are a result of drug abuse. Besides, illicit drug use is

associated with mental health conditions such as anxiety, sleep disturbances, and depressive disorder (Newman, Cho & Kim, 2017). I would also conduct depression screening to rate the patient’s depressive symptoms using patient health questionnaire 9 (PHQ-9) and GAD-7 to assess for generalized anxiety.

Differential diagnoses for this patient include Generalized Anxiety Disorder based on positive symptoms of sleep disturbance, restlessness, irritability, difficulty maintaining concentration, and fatigue (Newman, Cho & Kim, 2017). The second differential is Insomnia based on positive findings of difficulty initiating sleep, poor sleep quality, and a decreased need for sleeping (Ellis & Allen, 2019). The third differential is Major depressive disorder: Pertinent positive findings include a low mood, feelings of helplessness, fatigue, Insomnia, irritability, and difficulty maintaining concentration.

I conducted patient education by advising Ms. Jones to lower caffeine consumption and increase the intake of water and other fluids to help lessen the severity of Insomnia (Ellis & Allen, 2019). I taught her on anxiety reduction strategies such as relaxation, deep breathing, and guided imagery (Newman, Cho & Kim, 2017). Besides, I encouraged her to maintain a regular sleep and wake schedule as well as sleep hygiene strategies such as limiting caffeine from the afternoon, limiting fluid intake after dinner, reducing stimulating activities after 8 pm, and get out of bed when awakened during the night (Ellis & Allen, 2019). Furthermore, I educated Ms. Jones to reduce the intake of alcohol and depressant medications such as Tylenol and diphenhydramine. Additional patient teaching should include education on when she should seek emergent or specialized care, such as when she is experiencing feelings of hopelessness or self-harm. She will also need to be educated on how to monitor her symptoms and record insomnia and anxiety episodes with the associated factors.

I would not prescribe pharmacological treatment at this point but rather encourage the patient to use non-pharmacological measures. I would prescribe psychotherapy to help Ms. Jones change her thoughts and behavior to help relieve symptoms (Barkowski et al., 2020). I exhibited sound critical thinking by obtaining subjective patient data on her current health symptoms and health history. I asked primary interview questions to help identify the underlying problem and then asked further questions to assess the severity of the symptoms and the general condition of the patient.

What went well in your assessment?
What did not go so well? What will you change for your next assessment?
What findings did you uncover?
What questions yielded the most information? Why do you think these were effective?
What diagnostic tests would you order based on your findings?
What differential diagnoses are you currently considering?
What patient teaching were you able to complete? What additional patient teaching is needed?
Would you prescribe any medications at this point? Why or why not? If so, what?
How did your assessment demonstrate sound critical thinking and clinical decision making? sample paper attached covers actual assessment just needs to be reworded and book reference is Bickley, L. S. (2013). Bate’s guide to physical examination and history taking (11th ed.). Philadelphia, PA: Wolters Kluwer/Lippincott Williams & Wilkins. Chapters 16 & 17

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For assignments that need to be submitted to Lopes Write, please be sure you have received your report and Similarity Index (SI) percentage BEFORE you do a “final submit” to me.

Once you have received your report, please review it. This report will show you grammatical, punctuation, and spelling errors that can easily be fixed. Take the extra few minutes to review instead of getting counted off for these mistakes.

Review your similarities. Did you forget to cite something? Did you not paraphrase well enough? Is your paper made up of someone else’s thoughts more than your own?

Visit the Writing Center in the Student Success Center, under the Resources tab in LoudCloud for tips on improving your paper and SI score.

Late Policy

The university’s policy on late assignments is 10% penalty PER DAY LATE. This also applies to late DQ replies.

Please communicate with me if you anticipate having to submit an assignment late. I am happy to be flexible, with advance notice. We may be able to work out an extension based on extenuating circumstances.

If you do not communicate with me before submitting an assignment late, the GCU late policy will be in effect.

I do not accept assignments that are two or more weeks late unless we have worked out an extension.

As per policy, no assignments are accepted after the last day of class. Any assignment submitted after midnight on the last day of class will not be accepted for grading.

Communication

Communication is so very important. There are multiple ways to communicate with me:

Questions to Instructor Forum: This is a great place to ask course content or assignment questions. If you have a question, there is a good chance one of your peers does as well. This is a public forum for the class.

Individual Forum: This is a private forum to ask me questions or send me messages. This will be checked at least once every 24 hours.

Important information for writing discussion questions and participation

Welcome to class

Hello class and welcome to the class and I will be your instructor for this course. This is a -week course and requires a lot of time commitment, organization, and a high level of dedication. Please use the class syllabus to guide you through all the assignments required for the course. I have also attached the classroom policies to this announcement to know your expectations for this course. Please review this document carefully and ask me any questions if you do. You could email me at any time or send me a message via the “message” icon in halo if you need to contact me. I check my email regularly, so you should get a response within 24 hours. If you have not heard from me within 24 hours and need to contact me urgently, please send a follow up text to

I strongly encourage that you do not wait until the very last minute to complete your assignments. Your assignments in weeks 4 and 5 require early planning as you would need to present a teaching plan and interview a community health provider. I advise you look at the requirements for these assignments at the beginning of the course and plan accordingly. I have posted the YouTube link that explains all the class assignments in detail. It is required that you watch this 32-minute video as the assignments from week 3 through 5 require that you follow the instructions to the letter to succeed. Failure to complete these assignments according to instructions might lead to a zero. After watching the video, please schedule a one-on-one with me to discuss your topic for your project by the second week of class. Use this link to schedule a 15-minute session. Please, call me at the time of your appointment on my number. Please note that I will NOT call you.

Please, be advised I do NOT accept any assignments by email. If you are having technical issues with uploading an assignment, contact the technical department and inform me of the issue. If you have any issues that would prevent you from getting your assignments to me by the deadline, please inform me to request a possible extension. Note that working fulltime or overtime is no excuse for late assignments. There is a 5%-point deduction for every day your assignment is late. This only applies to approved extensions. Late assignments will not be accepted.

If you think you would be needing accommodations due to any reasons, please contact the appropriate department to request accommodations.

Plagiarism is highly prohibited. Please ensure you are citing your sources correctly using APA 7th edition. All assignments including discussion posts should be formatted in APA with the appropriate spacing, font, margin, and indents. Any papers not well formatted would be returned back to you, hence, I advise you review APA formatting style. I have attached a sample paper in APA format and will also post sample discussion responses in subsequent announcements.

Your initial discussion post should be a minimum of 200 words and response posts should be a minimum of 150 words. Be advised that I grade based on quality and not necessarily the number of words you post. A minimum of TWO references should be used for your initial post. For your response post, you do not need references as personal experiences would count as response posts. If you however cite anything from the literature for your response post, it is required that you cite your reference. You should include a minimum of THREE references for papers in this course. Please note that references should be no more than 5 years old except recommended as a resource for the class. Furthermore, for each discussion board question, you need ONE initial substantive response and TWO substantive responses to either your classmates or your instructor for a total of THREE responses. There are TWO discussion questions each week, hence, you need a total minimum of SIX discussion posts for each week. I usually post a discussion question each week. You could also respond to these as it would count towards your required SIX discussion posts for the week.

I understand this is a lot of information to cover in 5 weeks, however, the Bible says in Philippians 4:13 that we can do all things through Christ that strengthens us. Even in times like this, we are encouraged by God’s word that we have that ability in us to succeed with His strength. I pray that each and every one of you receives strength for this course and life generally as we navigate through this pandemic that is shaking our world today. Relax and enjoy the course!

Hi Class,

Please read through the following information on writing a Discussion question response and participation posts.

Contact me if you have any questions.

Important information on Writing a Discussion Question

• Your response needs to be a minimum of 150 words (not including your list of references)
• There needs to be at least TWO references with ONE being a peer reviewed professional journal article.
• Include in-text citations in your response
• Do not include quotes—instead summarize and paraphrase the information
• Follow APA-7th edition
• Points will be deducted if the above is not followed

Participation –replies to your classmates or instructor

• A minimum of 6 responses per week, on at least 3 days of the week.
• Each response needs at least ONE reference with citations—best if it is a peer reviewed journal article
• Each response needs to be at least 75 words in length (does not include your list of references)
• Responses need to be substantive by bringing information to the discussion or further enhance the discussion. Responses of “I agree” or “great post” does not count for the word count.
• Follow APA 7th edition
• Points will be deducted if the above is not followed
• Remember to use and follow APA-7th edition for all weekly assignments, discussion questions, and participation points.
• Here are some helpful links
• Student paper example
• Citing Sources
• The Writing Center is a great resource