What makes assessment an important part of the nursing process?
What makes assessment an important part of the nursing process?
Assessment is the first step of the nursing process and is critical as it provides the foundation for subsequent steps. The data gathered through assessment enables the health care team to identify problems and come up with a personalized care plan. Furthermore, continuous assessment is essential as it enables the team to identify further areas of concern, determine the success of the intervention, and revision of the care plan if necessary.
A good example of the application of assessment towards a positive patient outcome is through routine assessment done by a nurse. Take the scenario of a nurse who, through a routine blood sugar monitoring of her diabetic patient, identified a below normal blood sugar level of 3.3 mmol/l. Furthermore, by means of gathering more information through interview and observation, it came to her knowledge that her patient haven't eaten breakfast, is dizzy, feels weak, has clammy skin, and is sweating. These data then prompted her to take immediate action, offering her patient simple sugars and prompting necessary referral to other members of the interdisciplinary team like the physician and the dietician. She then would have to reassess the patient by monitoring blood sugar level at specific intervals until she becomes stable and come up with a care plan together with the patient to prevent such situation from happening in the future.
Normal blood sugar level should be 4 to 7 mmol/l before meal or below 8.5 to 9 mmol/l two hours after eating. Source: https://111.wales.nhs.uk/Hyperglycaemia(highbloodsugar)/#:~:text=Target%20blood%20sugar%20levels%20differ,2%20hours%20after%20a%20meal
Assessment enables the health care team to collect data which will then be used to:
- shed light into the health problems or areas of concern that needs to be addressed
- gain an understanding of the patient's condition
- come up with a personalized care plan to care for or treat the patient
- determine whether the intervention done was successful
- determine other areas that can be improved in patient care
- enable positive patient outcome
