Health Assessment: An Overview of Its Types and Importance

When a healthcare professional visits you to carry out an assessment, they look for many cues and clues they get with spoken information and physical examination findings. Diagnosing an illness, disorder or condition is no less than solving a puzzle. To effectively assess or determine a diagnosis for a patient, nursing procedures include laboratory studies, radiology studies and the physical exam itself – known as data collection.

In order to get a fair idea about your physical condition, a healthcare professional uses certain techniques like palpating (using hands to feel), a stethoscope, listening actively and observing carefully. This way it becomes easier for them to acquire the information they are looking for and provide a solution accordingly.

In this blog post, we have discussed health assessment and types of health assessment.

What Is a Health Assessment?

In simple terms, a health assessment is a process that identifies the specific needs of a person and a way to address a way to meet their needs by the healthcare system. In other words, it is an evaluation of the health status by performing a physical exam and checking the health history of a patient.

What Are The Types of Health Assessment?

There are mainly four types of health assessments – Initial Assessment, Focused Assessment, Time-lapsed Assessment, and Emergency Assessment. A group of routine procedures and processes related to patient assessment is a significant part of the healthcare industry as that makes further steps more effective, useful and meaningful.

Here is a description of each type of health assessment:

→ Initial Assessment:

Initial assessments are generally done by a physician or admitting nurse to have a thorough review of patient details like why the patient is seeking help, previous medical issues, social history and any other required detail. With the initial assessment, a doctor can get to the main problem directly without going forth and back with the patient about their issues.

If a patient is visiting frequently or admitted frequently, then the staff would ask for previous medical reports to have a holistic understanding of the patient’s condition. Going through the medical history of a person, doctors can locate and review how the current condition has developed over a period of time.

→ Focused Assessment:

As the name suggests, focused assessment is a close examination of a particular problem or a disease. Based on the issues a patient is suffering from, physician specialists are called to assist further. They will document their findings known as “consult reports”.

Focused assessments are done when it is suggested by a primary physician to proceed further with the expert’s guidance.

→ Emergency Assessment:

When a patient is in severe suffering and needs urgent care and attention, they fall under the emergency assessment category. Whosoever is in direct contact with the patient is involved in this form of assessment – to get necessary information collected. A team of healthcare professionals will perform emergency assessments from the time they enter the patient’s room till the time the emergency is over.

→ On-going Assessment:

In an ongoing assessment, a healthcare professional takes care of a patient’s physical and mental status for a longer period of time based on the initial information they have got from the patient. Respiratory care professionals need to use their assessment skills to ensure that a patient is receiving proper care by asking questions like if medications are helping them if the patient is improving their health, have the patient achieved their treatment goals and when the treatment needs to be discontinued.

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