Health Assessment

Anna T. Crouch, Clency Meurier, Anna T. Crouch, Clency Meurier

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781405114585
• eBook ISBN: 9781119185710
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Nursing

Health assessment is central to effective planning, implementation and evaluation of nursing care. All nurses are accountable for the care they provide and need to be able to accurately determine patient needs in order to plan and deliver evidence-based care. Vital notes for nurses: Health assessment provides students with the knowledge required to consider the many different factors which can influence patient's health, comfort, well-being and recovery and to confidently assess patient needs.

Vital notes for nurses: Health assessment explores concepts of holism, health and illness, factors to consider when assessing patients, communication skills needed for assessment, and all aspects of holistic assessment including physical, psychological, social, cultural and spiritual factors and nutritional needs.

* Provides a concise, accessible introduction to health assessment
* Includes physical, psychological, social, cultural and spiritual health assessment
* Explores essential concepts in assessment and care planning
* Within the Vital Notes for Nurses series
* Adopts a holistic approach

1
The human body

C Meurier

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Learning objectives

• Use appropriate anatomical terminologies to describe the location of the different organs of the body.
• Discuss the relationship between cells, tissues, organs and systems in relation to the whole organism.
• List the components of each body system and explain how they contribute to the function of the system.
• Discuss how the different parts and systems of the body work together to maintain homeostasis.

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Section 1: Introduction

Whether a health assessment is being performed to identify a health problem or to evaluate risk factors for health education purposes, a good understanding of biological knowledge is important (Carroll, 2004). Familiarisation with the common terminologies used for the different structures of the body, for example, enables effective communication of assessment findings to colleagues and other health professionals. Disease states and their impact can only be fully appreciated against the background of normal body structure and functions. In this chapter, the body will be looked at in a systematic way, starting from an examination of its basic organisation and the maintenance of internal stability to looking at individual organ systems.

Anatomical terms

To begin with, it is useful to provide an orientation of the body – looking at body regions, directional terms to describe one body part relative to another, and spaces and cavities that contain the different internal organs. This will facilitate precise and concise reporting of the assessment of the body. By using the exact anatomical term to describe the area of complaint of a particular symptom, attention can be focused more quickly to that specific area (Thibodeau & Patton, 2004).

Body regions

The body is conventionally divided into two major regions:

• Axial. This consists of the head, face, neck and trunk or torso.
• Appendicular. This consists of the shoulder girdles, the upper limbs, pelvic girdles and lower limbs.

Directional terms

Directional terms are used to locate body structures. They are usually grouped in opposite pairs, e.g. superior/inferior, anterior/ posterior. Directional terms only make sense when they are used to describe one structure relative to another. We refer, for example, to the elbow being superior to the wrist although they are both located in the superior aspect of the body. Directional terms are shown in Table 1.1.

Body cavities

The internal organs are located within spaces in the body called cavities. There are two main cavities: dorsal and ventral. The dorsal cavity, situated near the dorsal surface of the body, contains the brain in the cranial cavity and the spinal cord in the vertebral canal. The ventral cavity, located near the anterior part of the body, can be further divided into three cavities, namely thoracic, abdominal and pelvic. The diaphragm separates the thoracic cavity from the abdominal cavity. The largest organs in the thoracic cavity are the lungs. The heart is embedded in the mediastinum, i.e. the space between the two lungs. There is no physical separation between the abdominal and pelvic cavities and they are often referred to as the abdominopelvic cavity. The cavities contain internal organs that are collectively called viscera. To enable the precise location of organs, the abdominopelvic cavity is divided into nine smaller compartments as shown in Figure 1.1.

Table 1.1 Directional terms.

Directional term	Definition	Examples
Superior	Towar...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Table of contents
• Title
• Copyright
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Dedication
• List of contributors
• 1: The human body
• 2: Nursing assessment and care planning
• 3: Concepts of health, illness and holism
• 4: Factors to consider when assessing patients
• 5: Communication skills for holistic health assessment
• 6: Physical assessment
• 7: Assessment of nutritional status
• 8: Social assessment in healthcare
• 9: Psychological assessment
• 10: Cultural and spiritual health assessment
• Glossary
• Index
• End User License Agreement