need an assessment tool

Daytonite, BSN, RN · Nov 4, 2005

While I don't know Peplau's theory, when I was in my BSN program we had to assess all our patients using Antonovsky's theory of a person's needs. Fortunately, our instructors provided us with a handout that was exactly what your instructors are asking you to work up, poor thing. It's been so long I can't remember all of Antonovsky's needs. Anyway, I had them on a list that I kept at the front of any of my notebooks. When I was starting to do my written assessment of a patient I would start working my way down the list and enumerate the things I had learned about the patient (sort of a ROS) under each of the items on this list. We had a similar tool we used for doing a body system approach to assessing patients.

So, I would say that if you are developing an assessment tool, fire up a blank Word document and start off by listing Peplau's major points in her interpersonal relations theory that you need to hit on. Bold face or underline them. Then start listing questions or items under each of them that you feel will be important to ask or find out about. Don't expect to finish it at one sitting either. You will always think of something to add to it while you're eating dinner, or something you hear on the TV sparks a thought. The nice thing about using the computer is you just pull up the file with this document in it and add your new insight to it, save it and move on.

When you're ready to turn this in you will need to take the time to format this and put it in an overall uniform appearing piece of writing. For instance, you may want to present it as a series of questions. Or, you may want to just list the items you want to find out from the patient. Save. Print.

I often will keep a document like this that is a work in progress on my desktop so I can access it fast. You can always move this file off the desktop and into another file when you've finished with it.