Health assessment

Author: Lü Tanyun (Editor)
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-01-01
Features: In 2001, "Health Assessment" was officially included in the planning system of nursing professional teaching materials in China's higher education. The first edition of the nursing undergraduate textbook "Health Assessment" was published the following year and gradually replaced the clinical medicine professional "Diagnosis" textbook, which had been used by nursing professionals for nearly two decades. "Health Assessment" then became a compulsory course for undergraduate nursing students. To adapt to the reform and development of higher nursing education in China, under the organization and planning of the National Higher Medical and Pharmaceutical Teaching Material Construction Research Association, the Nursing Professional Teaching Material Evaluation Committee, and the Teaching Material Office of the Ministry of Health, a plan was formulated for the revision and second edition of the previous round of teaching materials, of which this textbook is one. The Teaching Material Office of the Ministry of Health had organized and collected opinions from some teachers of medical and pharmaceutical colleges regarding the problems encountered in the use of the first edition of the "Health Assessment" textbook. In line with the further implementation of the concept of holistic nursing, using the nursing process as the framework for writing, and functional health patterns as the model for collecting and analyzing assessment data, the second edition of the "Health Assessment" textbook aims to cultivate students' ability to confirm patients' nursing needs, patient problems, or nursing diagnoses with a holistic nursing assessment mindset different from medical diagnoses, as well as to monitor changes in their condition. In addition to adhering to the unified requirements of the Nursing Professional Teaching Material Evaluation Committee and the Teaching Material Office of the Ministry of Health, the second edition has accepted and adopted the constructive suggestions of the teachers, made corresponding revisions to the first edition, and further improved the scientificity, practicality, and professionalism of this book. The main revisions are as follows:
In the history-taking section, to make the content more comprehensive and suitable for clinical practice, the second edition of the textbook has added special history-taking content and developed a functional health pattern history-taking guide in the accompanying student guide and exercise book. Since symptoms are obtained from patients during history-taking, to make this section more logical, common clinical symptom assessment has been integrated into the history-taking chapter. Additionally, dehydration and skin and mucosal bleeding have been added. To standardize the items of the full-body physical examination and cultivate students' ability to perform a holistic physical examination, a section on the full-body physical examination has been added. At the same time, to facilitate student learning and further deepen their understanding of "normal" and "abnormal" physical examination results, the content of the physical examination chapter has been organized vertically by vision, touch, percussion, and auscultation, and horizontally by normal and abnormal as the main lines. Some opinions suggested that the laboratory examination content in the first edition was excessive. However, considering the needs of subsequent clinical nursing professional courses, the revision has added a section on endocrine hormone examination and has not made significant deletions in the content and word count of this chapter. Instead, it places greater emphasis on professional characteristics, emphasizing the collection and submission requirements of laboratory samples, as well as the evaluation of test results, in order to better integrate the chapter content with practice and clinical application.
Regarding the functional health pattern assessment section, to highlight the key points of the assessment and better guide nursing practice, while also avoiding unnecessary repetition with basic nursing course textbooks, the basic knowledge in the first edition's chapter on human functional health assessment has been revised to an overview, and the subsequent assessment content has been adjusted accordingly. In the writing of specific assessment items and content, efforts have been made to ensure clarity and logical organization.