Clinical Assessment and Reasoning

Reflection on Mr. Oquitoa's Case Study Dean Oquitoa's case study was a good exercise in understanding how people's lives vary in circumstance. A lot of individual's have life easy in comparison. As is the case of 95% of the people I know, they have homes, jobs and means to take care of their medical and physical needs. I hate being out in the cold for too long and know that I always have a place to come back to to get warm. I can't imagine being homeless and not having family around. We are always doing things with family and helping one another out. My parents have had to come live with us for a couple years and my mother in law has had to take care of a homeless nephew she's had, etc. For people that don't have family resources or friends, it's nice to know what options are out there. As nurses, we can help these individuals. One of the most important things we can do to develop our critical thinking and clinical reasoning abilities is to reflect...

Reflections on Critical Thinking in Nursing Critical thinking is a valued skill in the medical field. A number of symptoms can represent a variety of different diagnoses. The skill includes taking multiple symptoms and lab values to determine what is physiologically happening to a patient and then understanding what action to take. Continued training would be helpful for nurses to hone their critical thinking abilities. Determining nursing diagnoses in a timely manner makes a difference.  One example is recognizing the symptoms of a stroke patient. The sooner medical staff begin treatment, the greater the chance of recovery. At work we have online continued education modules we can access to help us develop these skills. Some are mandatory, however, the rest are optional. I like having the option to further my education when we have downtime. The medical field is a complex area of study that takes time and experience to master. A variety of learning styles help me ce...

My name is Faith Eshelman and I'm currently a medical/surgical, orthopedic and pediatric nurse at a nearby hospital. This is an area for me to gather and share notes regarding clinical assessment and reasoning. Thorough assessments are an integral part of patient care and I hope to gather useful information and insights to increase my abilities so I can better serve my patients. I hope some of these insights will be helpful for you as the reader as well.