What providers are; a patient comes in with a complaint and we must collect health information

PLEASE REPLY TO THE DISCUSSION PROMPT REPLY BELOW:

The discussion prompt is –

Describe how your diagnostic reasoning process has evolved after experiencing this course. Two scholarly articles on the subject of diagnostic skills and clinical reasoning of Advanced Practice Registered Nurses and summarize your findings.

The discussion prompt reply is –

My diagnostic reasoning has significantly improved after taking Advanced Health and Physical Assessment part 1 and 2. I have learned the proper steps required to collect a health assessment by understanding the right questions to ask in order to collect relevant information, to then perform a complete physical assessment. I feel much more confident in my skills to collect the necessary data and then apply that to deciding the appropriate diagnostics to order for the patient in order to further investigate their state of health and chief complaint. I’ve learned to think like an investigator, which is what providers are; a patient comes in with a complaint and we must collect health information, physical assessment data and diagnostics to determine the cause of their concern.

According to Barratt (2019) an Advanced Practice Registered Nurse needs to establish two elements into the foundation of their practice, clinical reasoning and effective communication. The APRN should be able to apply knowledge of pathophysiology, history taking, clinical examination and evaluating the significance of the information collected to compile a list of possible diagnoses and a final diagnosis.

This journal also shared this mnemonic-based diagnostic tool of compiling a list of hypotheses for a patient who you may be unclear about their diagnosis – which I found helpful.

VITAMIN CDEF mnemonic

• Vascular.

• Inflammatory (infective and ­ non-infective).

• Traumatic.

• Autoimmune.

• Metabolic.

• Idiopathic or iatrogenic.

• Neoplastic (benign or malignant).

• Congenital.

• Developmental or degenerative.

• Environmental or endocrine.

• Functional. (Barratt, 2019)

I believe in lifelong learning and therefore, I can’t wait to continue to grow and learn as a provider.

Reference:

Barratt, J. (2019). Developing clinical reasoning and effective communication skills in advanced practice. Nursing Standard, 34(2), 37-44. doi:10.7748/ns.2018.e11109