Health Assessment Review
Pain assessment
1. Assessing pain Ex. A patient wakes up with abdominal pain, what should the nurse do?
a. Offer sleeping pill
b. Offer a snack
c. Ask patient to describe the pain
2. When do you assess pain again? Give a time frame
a. Usually within 1 hr
Note: if narcotic, then check within 15 mins (because narcotic depresses respiratory)
3. Pain is always what the patient says it is
4. When doing physical therapy, anticipate increase in pain an hour from now
5. after post-op surgery, what do you do first in pain assessment
a. Ask patient to rate the pain
b. Assess quality of the pain
c. Assess pain radiation
6. When assessing the quality of pain, how do you phrase the question?
a. How would you describe the pain?
b. Is your pain stabbing or throbbing?
c. Do you have an aching pain?
Answer: A. Ask the patient what the pain feels like, don't specify for them
7. How does a patient’s culture affect their pain perception?
General
8. First level priority versus second level priority Problem
a. 1st level priority: emergency, life threatening: establish Airway Breathing
Circulation (ABC)
b. 2nd level priority: next in urgency: mental status change, pain, urine
abnormalities, lab abnormalities, risk of infection, risk to safety
c. 3rd level priority: important to the patient's health but can be attended to after
more urgent problems are addressed. Interventions to treat these problems are
long term. May require collaborative effort between patient and health care
professionals. Ex. education daily care
9. One of the ways to assess mental status
a. level of consciousness - how alert are they
10. Always look at the outcome... Where they're going
11. General survey - are they alert, why are they here
