Advanced Health Assessment

Catalog description

This course builds upon the basic assessment skills of the nurse. It is designed to augment, refine, and enhance the practitioner's ability to assess the health status of individuals, to recognize deviant and abnormal findings, to evaluate responses to illness and to identify health risks. The course will enable the practitioner to collect a comprehensive health history and perform a complete physical assessment in a systematic and organized manner. Course content emphasizes a holistic approach toward assessment, incorporating the client's response to wellness and illness, sociocultural influences, and health seeking behaviors. Specialized assessment tests and procedures and laboratory test data will be used by the practitioner to uncover client health cues in addition to those identified by questioning and examining. The practitioner's skill in assessing a client's resources, strengths, limitations, and coping behaviors will be intensified. Enrollment is limited to Graduate level students.