The amount of information related to my Physical Assessment class is profoundly beneficial to my future nursing practice. I strongly believe that assessment is always the solid foundation of nursing process. Without it, the nursing process will not progress, and patient goals will not be met. For example, if a patient complained of a chest pain, you will elicit the subjective and objective patient data in order to discern and formulate the problem. When the pieces of assessment information are put together, a nurse can figure out what, when and how to implement. Then, after implementation, the process proceeds to evaluation, which is a similar way of assessment—you check, measure and survey the patient outcomes. In other words, assessment is the start and end point of nursing process—a step that a nurse begins with and goes back to. Being trained thoroughly and properly in terms of physical assessment will result in greater and better nursing practice, and thus, high quality patient care. Not only that physical assessment is the initial step in the nursing process, it is also the most important nursing skills one nurse should possess when going to the clinical practice settings. It is because the assessment information a nurse gathers are the reasons why he or she intervenes. That’s why, personally, I think the information learned in this course will be very significant in developing and polishing my assessment skills. Most importantly, I will be able to think more carefully and critically.
