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Advanced Health Assessment Course Reflection

Mary Egger

University of Saint Mary

NU 607 Advanced Health Assessment

August 26, 2021

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Reflection

Advanced Health Assessment has provided me with the necessary resources and tools

needed to accomplish a comprehensive assessment. The difference in my assessments from the

beginning of this course until now is astonishing. I have gained an insight as to what a family

nurse practitioner needs to assess when providing primary care to their patients. In reflection

over this course, there has been an abundance of knowledge that has been refreshed in my mind

from my original nursing school.

My favorite part of this course was the clinical experience both in person and virtual. I

was pleasantly surprised at how much the clinical impacted my current practice as a nurse. I was

able to gather a greater respect for nursing and assessments. Nursing assessments are vital to the

wellbeing of patients all over the world. Our subjective and objective data that is uncovered

shapes the way that a patient receives care. I mostly learned how to further communicate with

patients, especially more difficult conversations like substance abuse. I also learned the

importance of a detailed assessment for a patient’s chief complaint. The virtual clinical sparked

my critical thinking skills in the manner of asking interview questions for a patient. I was placed

into a role that I am unfamiliar with as the provider and had to uncover important information

that would allow for a health promotion plan. This course had its challenges and it taught me

how to adapt my current thinking from my current role as a bedside nurse. I enjoyed the insight

into a world that was unfamiliar before. I was able to push the boundaries in my mind and

accomplish patient care in a different way. I hope that this course allows for better patient care

for the foreseeable future.

Another aspect to this class that allowed me to grow in my nursing assessments was the

weekly discussion post case studies. I enjoyed being able to pick a specific prompt and read
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other peers posts regarding similar topics. The case studies challenged the way that I currently

think as a nurse and pushed me to see the patient from a different perspective. I can take that

feeling and apply it to my current patients and advocate for them in a more specialized way now.

I was not expecting to learn from the real life experiences from the family nurse practitioner. I

was able to gather a better understanding and respect for the type of specialized nursing that I

encountered. This course has taught me a lot about the advanced nursing assessment and how to

care for patients in an overall way.

My only apprehension at the beginning of this course was that it was an online course

where the goal was to learn health assessment. It is hard to learn the assessment techniques when

you are not directly practicing on an actual patient or mannequin. The in person clinical and

virtual clinical can only provide so much information and practice. That being said, I was able to

learn more than I thought possible, especially with the virtual clinical. It was nice to have a

‘patient’ with no expectations and judgements. I was able to ask questions that I had never had to

ask, and it allowed me to practice in a safe environment.

Overall, this course provided me with a perspective that I did not think was possible. I

felt proud to be a nurse and obtaining an advanced degree in our current climate of the

profession. I could see myself teaching nursing students who are new to the profession with the

skills that I obtained. This class provided me the confidence to learn in a safe environment and

the competence to practice directly with patients in a clinical setting. I will take what I learned in

this class and apply it to my current position and my future classes.