Assess and Monitor.....

psu_213, BSN, RN · Feb 3, 2015

I going to answer this under the assumption this is a homework question (if it's not, forgive meâ€¦you know what happens when you assume). What do you think it means when you assess a patient? What does it mean if you monitor a patient? Are these the same things? Would you assess a patient you are monitoring? Would you monitor a patient you assess? Please--share your thoughts! We can go from there.

my4helpers · Feb 3, 2015

This is actually not a homework question; I would never ask one, unless I got my homework back and it was graded :-) This was on a test last week and I got it wrong so I wanted to see what other people's rationals were. To me these have very different meanings. When I think of assess, I think of a deep head to toe assessment where you are listening, palpating, and documenting. On the other hand monitor just means watching at least that's what I think they mean.

**NICU Guy, BSN, RN** · Feb 3, 2015

Monitoring is a general observation of a patient for changes in their condition. Assessing is a close analysis of the patient's systems. Although monitoring the patient's breathing effort and assessing their breathing effort would be very similar action.

NightNurseRN13 · Feb 3, 2015

Remember that ADPIE is ongoing. You don't reach evaluation and then stop, you go back to assessment.

Assessment has the analysis and interpretation component, whereas monitoring is measuring indicators that might require further assessment.

nurseprnRN, BSN, RN · Feb 3, 2015

If I am a tech at a big dam and I am monitoring it, I might log every hour that the water level behind it is dropping. Yep, I'm monitoring, see? Here's my log with all the hourly numbers, I haven't missed one.

But if I don't do an assessment, I miss that there's a big crack at the bottom of it letting the water out.

I can be a monitor tech in the nursing station watching rhythm strips. But I am not competent to assess what they mean in the context of what else is going on with the patients.

And this, all, is why "monitor" isn't enough.