How did your program teach physical assessment?

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I am curious to learn how your NP program taught the advanced physical/health assessment course? Were there any face-to-face requirements, or was it done online? How were you checked off? Did you feel prepared? I precept NP students, and am trying to get a better understanding of how other programs teach this. If you could let me know what school you attended that would help too!

Specializes in Psychiatric and Mental Health NP (PMHNP).

I went to a B&M school. The physical assessment course was hybrid, with didactic content on line. We had an in-person lab for 3 hours each session once or twice a week and practiced exam skills on each other and also on those medical dummies. We had to complete a head to toe exam in order to pass. There was a separate 1/2 day workshop on urogenital exam with live male and female human beings who were medical "models" that also teach how to do the exam.

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Specializes in Midwife, OBGYN.

I’m in a B&M program and this is how they teach us physical assessment, everything is done live and in person:

We have a 2 semester class devoted to Advanced Health Assessment. We are lectured on a different topic or body system each week and how to perform the physical assessment. Then we also have lab each week where our TAs go through the physical assessment again and then we have to perform the body system assessment on our lab partner. Then we have 2 sets of checks off for a set of body systems plus a final comphrehensive check off across all the body systems. Then we have a final oral exam where we need to put everything together. We are given a patient case study and we have to verbally explain the signs and symptoms, how we will complete the physical assessment, the types of labs and diagnostic tests we need to do to confirm our findings etc. We have to know all of the different body system check offs but we randomly draw a body system when we get checked off so we need to know all of them because we don’t know which one we will get. We only get 15 mins to perform the check off; if we go over we get points deducted. If we go over by 5 mins it is an automatic fail.

This is further reinforced in our med surg rotations where we have to perform it on the patients that we see along with taking a HPI and identify their Chief Complaint.

Then we are again reinforced on the landmarks for physical assessment in our anatomy class with cadavers i.e we need to know that the Angle of Louis is the landmark that we use to find and to best listen for the aortic valve (right sternal border second intercostal space) or where the right middle lobe is in relation to the ribs (4th rib RSB, 5th rib MAL, 6th rib MCL) and why we need to include it in our physical assessment for lungs because that is where pneumonia is likely to develop.

Then we are reinforced again during small group practice with the med students and the PA students in interprofessional group practice. We also practice on our own time to prepare for the check offs as well.

Edit: For the pelvic, breast, and male genital exams we used plastic models to learn how to place the speculum and to check for masses. We will have live actors next year when we focus on the body systems that pertain to our specialty.

Hope that helps!

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Specializes in MS, Emergency.

Mine class is done online at specific time of the week. Watching videos done online. Video demonstration with a pretend patient done 2x then at the end of the semester we had head to toe assessment workshop. We also did a complete head to toe with professor check off before we were allowed to proceed at the college of medicine building. Practiced gyne exams on GUTA. Exams were proctored through out.

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It was built into our first clinical rotation. We also had actor evaluations during our summer intensives.

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I am attending a state school which is a hybrid program and for the physical assessment, we had online content as well as a lab portion that was divided by system HEENT, skin, cardio etc. We met for lab and practiced on our partners and our professor was there for instruction and lecture. Our checkoff was done in front of our professor. We had 90 min to complete the checkoff...why so long? We would be stopped and asked a question during the checkoff. Example what is the normal diaphragmatic excursion? And what does it mean when not in normal range? What condition would this present in? For the male/female exams we had live models! Hope this helps ?

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