Course Description and Objectives

Course Description

Advanced practice nurses perform comprehensive health assessments in a variety of settings. Advanced health assessment integrates the health history, physical and psychological changes and psychosocial variations. The assessment is used to determine health and risk status, develop health promotion strategies, and establish priorities of care. Differences between a complete health history and a history for an episodic event are examined.

Course Objectives

Upon successfully completing this course, you will be able to do the following:

  1. Perform and integrate the functional assessment, health history, physical exam, psychosocial assessment, and appropriate diagnostic testing into a comprehensive database in order to develop an appropriate plan of care for both adult and geriatric clients (MSN Essential I, II, V).
  2. Using the process of evidence-based practice, perform a risk assessment including lifestyle risk factors and determine appropriate health promotion strategies (MSN Essential I, II, V, VII).
  3. Incorporate concepts of lifestyle, cultural, or ethnic background and developmental variations into comprehensive health assessment (MSN Essential I, II, V).
  4. Relate assessment findings to underlying pathological or physiological changes (MSN Essential I, II, V, VII).
  5. Critically analyze interview data, physical exam findings, and diagnostic tests/procedures in order to begin to formulate a differential diagnosis (MSN Essential I, II, III, VIII)