HEALTH ASSESSMENTS

Assessment is an absolutely essential part of nursing in all disciplines and specialties. So few patients have only one medical or health issue. We have to be able to identify any issues the patient may be experiencing. If you're working on a cardiac unit with a patient that has markedly reduced cardiac output how are you going to figure out whether or not the brain is being adequately perfused if you don't know how to do a neuro assessment??

true. I just have a hard time understanding what nurses ACTUALLY do in real life because in school we are taught everything to make sure our bases are covered. But I understand what you're saying, thanks for your input.

I think the types of assessments are somewhat specific to the unit you work on. I know that med/surg nurses have to do head to toe assessments, neuro assessments are key for patients with altered mental status, alzheimers, strokes, etc... postpartum assessments are pretty specific to L&D mother/baby units, and ER nurses do problem focused assessments. It is wise to be comfortable with them all, because you will do them all in each clinical rotation, and even in more specialized settings, like the ER, you may not do a full head to toe assessment on one patient, but you may end up doing each type of assessment on different patients based on their chief complaint/admitting diagnosis. Just cover all your bases! :)

I agree with all the above. You're taught to do full head to toe assessments so that you're not missing anything, regardless of what are of nursing you're working in. It's alot but the more you use it the better you become at it. :) It'll become second nature that you'll find yourself standing in line somewhere assessing the people around you.:)