Advanced Health Assessment

Nail and Hair Video Transcript

This presentation will discuss the objective assessment of the hair and nails. When assessing a patient's hair, it is important to evaluate the texture, the distribution, note if there's any scalp lesions, rashing or flaking, and ensuring that there's no alopecia, which is loss of hair. Inspection and palpation of the nails is important, determining the shape and consistency of the nails, making sure the contour of the nails are symmetrical on both hands, that the color of the nailbeds are pink with the opally crescent-shaped hue at the bottom of the nail, and assessing for capillary refill, when you press on the nailbed, that the color returns to pink in a couple of seconds.