Health Assessment in Healthcare

Running head: HEALTHCARE
HEALTHCARE
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HEALTHCARE
Introduction
Health assessment is an important aspect in healthcare which includes physical
inspections or various other procedures to detect the illness in a very early stage, when the
person starts feeling ill or notices symptoms. Health assessment of in older adults can be
performed on variety of levels, that range from minor screenings to complex disease
evaluations. In order to perform the assessment, the healthcare providers and nurses needs to
practice skills and knowledge about the process (Forbes & Watt, 2015). They must know the
appropriate process of using diagnostic tools and apparatus. One of the major part of health
assessment is interview with the effected person. The assignment will focus on the Critical
Reasoning Cycle to conduct the interview with older person regarding the health issues
witnessed.
Clinical Reasoning Cycle 1:
The interview set was manual, based on the nursing and healthcare knowledge and
practice a questionnaire was prepared. The interview was conducted between a healthcare
professional and an older person using prepared a semi-structured interview grounded on the
primary ideas. environment and the surrounding where the health assessment interview will
be performed was selected very carefully. The questions focused on the health issues faced
by the older person and what all facilitation issues the person has been facing because of the
age group and it was an open-end interview. There was minimal amount of distraction; no
noise from things such as television, music player, radio and also the public address
arrangements were not loud as it may distract the elderly person or effect the ability of the
person to distinguish between words and comprehend the questions asked. (Giger, 2016). The
questions and practice included the case history, family medical history, present

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medication, palpation, inspection, percussion and auscultation (Stanyon et al., 2016).
Also it used recorders to record the conversation and the data were written down in as a text.
Clinical Reasoning Cycle 2:
Before collecting the data and information of the health condition of the older person
using techniques, it is important to collect the history and present knowledge about the older
patient. This will include identifying personal data such as name, age, address, religion etc.
Then comes the past history collection such as finding out the allergies the person has,
immunizations, surgeries, past illness and injuries that the older person witnessed and also
family medical history (Jarvis, 2015). It states whether the patient family line has any
disorder or illness cases. At last comes the present medical information, such as medications,
treatments therapies the older person is going through.
Palpation: Palpation basically used in order collect data using sensory actions of touch in the
hands and finger. Palpation is a process which is used for assessment in various physical
assessment parts, such as to pulses, texture of skin, body temperature, hair condition, tumour
presence or pain (Kristensen et al., 2015). The nurse may use her fingertips to check the
pulses of the older person and other physical assessments.
Inspection: Inspection is the methodology which is most commonly used for the physical
assessment process. It is a process in which the intelligences of vision, smell, and audible
range are used for data collection (Harte et al., 2017). The healthcare giver, using the
knowledge of vision, hearing and smell will understand the difficulties and problems in the
health of the older person.
Percussion: Percussion is an important technique used for health assessment in which the
size, location, and thickness of the portions under the skin are examined by drumming the