Critical Reflection on Health Assessment: A Nursing Perspective

This report provides a critical reflection on a nursing student's experience with health assessment, utilizing the Gibbs reflective cycle. The student details their learning journey, including the use of the Australian Nursing Standards Assessment Tool (ANSAT) and experiences with health interviewing under the supervision of a mentor. The reflection covers the student's feelings, evaluation of the experience, and analysis of the challenges and successes encountered. The report highlights the importance of critical thinking, holistic patient care, and the development of essential nursing skills. The student concludes with a summary of key learnings and outlines an action plan for future professional development, emphasizing continued research, skill enhancement, and assertive communication. References to relevant literature are included to support the analysis.

Introduction
This paper aims to critically reflect on the experience of health assessment. Reflection
is profoundly associated with learning which is generally gained from experience. In the
professional field, it is viewed as an important approach. Whenever we are formulating any
kind of nursing care plan to a patient, according to my opinion, assessment skills are the most
fundamental skills. It is one of the first steps of nursing career and here in order to reflect my
experience of assessing patients, I will be using Gibbs reflective cycle. At the end of the
essay, I will intend my future action plan of my nursing career in brief.
Description
Here is the description section of my reflection paper as per the Gibbs reflective
cycle. Being a nursing student, in this semester I learned about the ANSAT tool which stands
for Australian Nursing Standards Assessment Tool (Hunter & Arthur, 2016). It is a very user-
friendly assessment tool and can be used to assess health performance (Sweet, Bazargan,
McKellar, Gray & Henderson, 2018). This tool has been developed in order to assist the
consistency of the nurses (Maestre & Rudolph, 2015). Assessment is basically a collection of
data of individuals that states the health condition (Schmitz, S., McCullagh, Adams, Barry &
Walsh, 2016) (Katikireddi et al., 2018). During this semester, I was working on to learn
specific aspects of health assessment such as health interviewing, measurement of TPR,
measurement of BP and others. Among all these assessment techniques, health interviewing
seemed to be interesting and I am going to reflect incidents and my first ever experience with
health interviewing. I was doing this assessment under the supervision of my mentor. A short
and brief health interview of an old person was conducted in this regard. My mentor helped
me throughout the journey. The interview was not limited on the physical being but also
included values, cultures, families and other supportive networks. In order to provide a

holistic care, such factors had been considered. It will help in having clear as well as detailed
information about the patient which will be helpful in the care progress.
Feelings
Here, in this section I will be reflecting my feelings upon the completion of the
learning of this semester. Prior to the interview, I felt that I need to be mindful being a nurse
and patient’s confidentiality and trust is most important to me. I realized that integrating
some of the techniques I learned in the classroom teaching during the interview can make it
smoother which will also help to have a better assessment. A lot of things were going into my
head during the semester and I was curious about how everything could be put together to
achieve the best outcome. Learning from this semester restored my knowledge about the
importance of critical thinking as well as holistic approach in this profession while providing
care to the patients. Coming to the end of the semester, I can say that I have learned a lot of
things about health assessment such as health interviewing and I felt, all this knowledge has
increased my confidence level.
Evaluation
On evaluation, it was an excellent opportunity to learn some new and specific nursing
concepts. I also learnt that we should not make any assumption before assessing a patient and
a treatment can only be started appropriately, if the assessment is accurate and proper. Also, it
is important to take into the account of the whole picture of the patients, starting from the
family to the social connection while assessing their health because the nurse is the only
healthcare professional who will be there at the bedside all the time and during any
emergency situations, nurses are the first to be aware of. The experience during this semester
has led to an increase in understanding of my role as a nurse practitioner. I learned that the
type of assessment may differ according to the need of the patients (Johnson & May, 2015).

Analysis
Analysing the whole learning experience during this semester, I found that practicing
under the supervision of mentor is quite comfortable but the health interviewing might be
difficult if the patient is not willing to open up his personal information and hence, building
the trust is the most necessary. This semester helped a lot in enhancing my skill regarding the
assessment of the patients. Also, the learning helped me to think critically and make valid
clinical reasoning. In some places, I got critical feedback from my mentor regarding my
performance in the assessment but at the same time, it helped me to realise that I had to be
more careful and in order to reach the same level of my peers, I need to work harder.
Controlling emotion is important in healthcare profession and, I realized that I need to have a
strong control over my emotions (Ingebretsen & Sagbakken, 2016).
Conclusion
At the end, I can conclude that the semester helped me to reinforce and strengthen my
skills on specific aspects of health assessment which is a very vital topic of nursing practice. I
found the textbook used in the classroom teaching is exceptionally helpful, and the short
interview round was extremely efficient in developing practical knowledge on health
assessment. I also realize that I need to be supportive to my co-workers. Assessment and its
importance are now clear to me. While taking interview of any patient I should be cautious of
his/her emotion and I should be selective while questioning. Ensuring the patients’ safety is
the most essential thing in this profession (Ryan et al., 2018).
Action plan
Here, I am coming to the action plan that is to be developed on the completion of this
semester. I think the skills I have gained in this semester will me further in my education and

additionally, it will also help me when I will be starting my career in this profession. I will
engage myself more in research in order to develop my skill and knowledge to provide a high
quality care to the patients. The videos shown during this semester will help me in future as
references. However, in case of any query, I will always discuss with my peers and seniors to
take any advice. I will also develop my assertive skill in future.

References
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