Question

7.Define Nursing Process.

8. What are the purposes of Nursing Process?

9. Is Nursing Process a cycle (or cyclical)? Discuss your answer.

12. The first phase in Nursing Process is Assessing. Activities included in assessing
are:

a. Collecting data
b. Organizing data
c. Validating data
d. Documenting data
A nurse must first collect the data. There are 2 types of data, what are the 2
types of data? Please define, differentiate and give examples for each data.

13. How can a nurse collect subjective data and objective data?
What are techniques or methods in collecting subjective data and objective data?

14. Sources of data maybe from primary sources and secondary sources. Please
differentiate the two and give examples for each.

Answer 1

7. Nursing process is an organized sequence of problem solving steps used to identify and to manage the health problems of clients.

Nursing process is a systematic problem solving process that guides all nursing actions.

8. Purposes of nursing process includes

• Nursing process is importat for restoring, maintaining and promoting health.
• Helps to identify clients health status, actual or potential health care needs and problems.
• Heips to deliver specific nursing interventions to meet the needs.
• Developed asa specific method for the application of scientific problem solving approach to nursing practice.
• Helps to establish goals of care, communicate plan of care and evaluate the outcomes.
• Provides a frame work in which to practice nursing.
• Helps to enable nurses to use time and resources efficiently.
• Improves the quality of care that the client receives.

9. Nursing process is cyclical and is used in conjunction with various theoretical nursing models or philosophies. Nursing process is cyclic and involves the components : Assessment, nursing diagnosis, planning, implementation and evaluation. Nursing process is an ongoing process. It comprises of series of sequential phases built upon the preceding step. Each phase logically leads to the next steps. This means that it never truly ends. Clients always have needs and are always at risk. As such, the process is always being used to help assess and meet those needs.

12. There are two types of data. They are subjective data and objective data. These are the primary sources of data collection.

Subjective data refers to the client's own verbal responses of their health status or problems. Only client can provide subjective data. Subjective data is gathered from client what he experiences that cannot be measured by the nurse using her five senses. Subjective data can be called as symptoms or covert data.

Examples of subjective data includes : Clients own feelings, perception and self report symptoms, pain is an important piece of subjective data and is often called as fifth vital sign.

Objective data are observation or measurements of clients health status. The objective data or information can be called as' facts' whereas subjective data and information as' opinions'. Objective data are also called as signs or overt data.

Examples of objective data includes: Inspection of the condition of a surgical wound, description of an observed behaviour, measurement of blood pressure, temperature, pulse, respiration etc, height, weight, level of consciousness, general appearance etc.

13. A nurse can collect subjective data and objective data by any of these methods such as observation, interview, questionnaire, physical examination, laboratory and diagnostic testing.

Subjective data can be collected by using interview and questionnaire. Interview is a formal conversation between the nurse and the client wherein the two participates in the question answer session.

Questionnaire implies a form consisting of a series of written or printed open end or closed end questions to be marked by the client.

Objective data can be collected using physical examination and laboratory findings.

Physical examination is the head to toe examination of a client based on the following steps of inspection, palpation, percussion and auscultation. Inspection is the visual examination of the patient. Palpation involves using hands and place on the client's body for identifying any swelling, mass and areas of pain. Percussion is tapping the client's bodily surfaces and hearing the resulting sounds to determine the presence of air and solid masses. Auscultation is listening to an area of the body using a stethoscope.

14. Data can be obtained from primary and secondary sources.

Primary source

The primary source of data is the patient.Client who is alert and well oriented can provide the informations regarding past medical history, previous surgery, present symptoms of illness, life styles etc.

When the client is unable to provide information because of any illness, deterioration of mental status, age, secondary sources are used for data collection.

Secondary source

The secondary sources of data includes the family members, significant others, medical records, diagnostic procedures , etc.

Members of the patient's family or any significant others may be able to produce information about the client's past health status, current illness, allergies and current medications etc can be considered as secondary sources.