Health Assessment - For Undergraduate Nursing Majors (2nd Edition) (Includes CD-ROM)

Author: Lü Tanyun
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-05-01
Features: In 2001, "Health Assessment" was officially included in the planning system of nursing professional textbooks for higher education in China. The first edition of the nursing undergraduate textbook "Health Assessment" was published the following year and gradually replaced the clinical medicine professional "Diagnostics" textbook, which had been used by nursing professionals for nearly two decades. "Health Assessment" subsequently became a mandatory course for undergraduate nursing students. To adapt to the reform and development of higher nursing education in China, under the organizational planning of the National Higher Medical Textbook Construction Research Association, the Nursing Professional Textbook Review Committee, and the Textbook Office of the Ministry of Health, a plan was formulated for the revision and second edition of the previous round of textbooks, and this textbook is one of them. The Textbook Office of the Ministry of Health had organized and collected opinions from some teachers in 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 identify patients' nursing needs, patient problems, or nursing diagnoses using a holistic nursing assessment mindset different from medical diagnoses, as well as to monitor changes in the condition. In addition to adhering to the unified requirements of the Nursing Professional Textbook Review Committee and the Textbook Office of the Ministry of Health, the second edition has accepted and adopted the constructive suggestions of the teachers, making corresponding revisions to the first edition to further enhance 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 content on special history-taking. Additionally, a functional health pattern history-taking guide has been included in the accompanying student guide and exercise book. Since symptoms are obtained from patients through history-taking, to make this section more logical, the assessment of common clinical symptoms has been integrated into the history-taking chapter. Furthermore, dehydration and skin and mucosal bleeding have been added.
To standardize the items of the complete physical examination and cultivate students' ability to perform a holistic physical examination, a section on the complete physical examination has been added. At the same time, to facilitate students' learning and 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, with no significant in the content and word count of this chapter. Instead, greater emphasis is placed 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 practical application in clinical settings.
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 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 structure.