Archives for January 2009

Because all health care treatment and decisions are made based on the data you gather during assessment, it is paramount that your assessment be factual and complete.
Jarvis, C (2008). Physical Examination & Health Assessment

No pressure there, no pressure whatsoever!

So classes have started with a bang! I am currently taking three classes at Temple as a non-matriculated student. I’m in “Health Assessment for the RN”, “Community Health”, and “Nursing Research”. They are all for the most part online but I will have to show up at Campus a few times this semester for one of them, and I have to be online for live classroom sessions for the other class. So far so good, except that I spent the last four days in Kentucky enjoying wonderful company, pork steaks and some fine Kentucky bourbon, and therefore didn’t get much work done.

This morning I’m trying to get caught up on my studying because I work two on, one off, two on starting tomorrow, so I need to get ahead of the game. The quote above is from my Health Assessment textbook, and it hit me hard enough that I just had to post it. It’s not new knowledge, just the way that it’s phrased kind of makes me break into a small sweat when I consider how often practitioners forget this and kind of skim over the details in their assessment. Makes me squirm.

I’m currently reading, during my ever shrinking free time, the book How Doctors Think, by Jerome Groopman. This book talks about how patients can help doctors think and listen better, and how doctors (or any healthcare practitioner) can learn to identify where they fall short in interacting and listening to their patients, and in thinking about the data they’re presented with. It’s a fascinating read, one that I highly recommend, and the principles I’m picking up from it seem to go along very well with my Health Assessment class. Incidentally, Jerome Groopman is also the author of another of my favorite books – The Anatomy of Hope: How People Prevail in the Face of Illness, which I referred to in my post Prepared to Care for the Body But Not The Soul.

What else is new… Family Guy seasons 1, 2, 4, and 5 are now in my possession – Yay! Thanks Rick. Now I just need seasons 3 & 6, to watch during my ever shrinking free time.