Health Assessment Class

[2bmalenurse007]

This I will be taking Health Assessment , any tips on what to expect?

Or what to be prepared for?

Thanks in advance for any advice.

[greygooseuria]

I finished my health assessment class about 3 weeks ago (yay accelerated BSN programs with summer classes).

You'll review each body system and how to do the physical exam for that part of the body. If you've ever had a physical, you should pick it up fairly quickly. Not a hard class by any means...just know your A&P and you should be set.

[Daytonite, BSN, RN]

my physical assessment class for my bsn program had a textbook similar to what the medical students had, we were told. we learned to do a complete physical exam on someone. our final exam was to perform a physical exam on another person in the presence of the instructor and then turn in a written report within a week. the idea of this class is to learn what is normal and abnormal. it is the abnormal stuff that you need to recognize to help identify nursing problems. assessment is step #1 and the foundation of the nursing process. if you miss things in assessing a patient the whole foundation of your thinking process, like the leaning tower of pisa, may seem sound, but the end product just looks like something isn't right.

there is a sticky thread in the nursing student assistance forum that you will find very helpful, especially some of the websites from the medical schools:

• https://allnurses.com/forums/f205/health-assessment-resources-techniques-forms-145091.html - health assessment resources, techniques, and forms

p.s. i didn't want to scare you. health assessment class should be to learn the basic normal assessment of a person. some classes also throw in some of the pathological things that you can find. it depends on what your program has decided the curriculum to be. what i have found is that learning assessment has been a career long thing. i'm always learning something new, particularly when it involves assessing something specific to a medical disease. i still have the notebook from my assessment class from 20 years ago! but as you will find, when it comes to specific medical conditions, there are specific signs and symptoms that you will want to assess for.

[Journey_On, BSN, RN]

I just finished up my Physical Exam & Assessment class. Like other posters have said, you learn the structures of each body part and how to do a physical assessment on each system.

At the end of our semester, we had to perform a complete head-to-toe assessment on another person in 30 minutes, in front of one instructor. I just did mine yesterday and passed! We were provided with an outline of what to include while performing our head-to-toe assessment. A tip is to write out a script of what you are going to say and practice that, several times. The head-to-toe was actually a part of our clinical grade (pass/fail) though, not our Physical Exam & Assessment class.

It's amazing how much I learned in 10 weeks (summer semester). My lab partner was saying how we didn't know ANY of this before we started, and now we are able to do a complete head-to-toe assessment on a patient. Physical assessment is such an important part of your nursing career. This is a very valuable class.

I wish you the best!

[bowchicawawa]

i need to get that class done before the summer's over! can i ask where you're taking the class or anywhere you know it's available! thanks SO much man if you do...