The Role of Holistic Assessments in Nursing Essay

Introduction

A good nursing assessment provides the building blocks to form individualised patient care. To formulate a systematic assessment, models and frameworks are used together, such as the Model of Nursing (MoN) (Roper et al, 2008) and the Nursing Process (NP) (Melin-Johansson et al, 2017). The application of the NP framework helps to identify what holistic information needs to be gathered to form an effective plan of care following a five-stage framework; assessment, diagnosis, planning, implementation and evaluation (Kadioglu et al, 2017). The assessment stage of the NP provides a systematic structure to collecting, analysing and sorting information to inform a nursing care plan which identifies interventions to improve health (Kadioglu et al, 2017). The MoN helps to implement the assessment stage of the NP and gives a structure to obtaining information on the patient’s activities of daily living (ADL); mobility, sleeping, eating and excretion (Petiprin, 2016). Alongside, clinical assessment tools are used to gather specific, subjective and objective data to create a person-centred approach to care, for example Waterlow pressure area risk assessment tool (Waterlow, 2005). Assessment tools also highlight what specialist clinicians are needed to provide a multidisciplinary approach, such as tissue viability nurses can help advise on the prevention and treatment of pressure sores (Trueland, 2015). The Role of Holistic Assessments in Nursing Essay Paper