Our Lady of the Pillar College-Cauayan

Cauayan City, Isabela

Learning Feedback Diary

Name: Keneth Dave J. Aglibut Section: 1C

College of Nursing and Midwifery
Group: 2 Week: 1

This learning feedback diary is all about vital signs will go into discussion about the strengths and weaknesses
of each vital sign and the importance of each of them. Vital signs should be assessed many different times
colle
such as on admission to a health care facility, before and after something substantial has happened to the
patient such as surgery and so forth (ref inter). I learned to assess blood pressure (BP), pulse (P), temperature
(T) and respiration (R) and I will reflect and discuss which aspects were more difficult and ways to improve
on them. While pulse, respiration and temperature were fairly easy to become skilled at, it was blood pressure
which was a bit more difficult to understand. There are 2 types of breathing, costal and diaphragmatic
breathing. Costal refers to the intercostal and accessory muscles while diaphragmatic refers to breathing using
your diaphragm. It is important to understand the two different types of breathing because it is vital in the
assessment of the patient. For example, if a patient is suing their accessory muscles to aid in breathing then we
can safely assume that they are having breathing problems and use a focused assessment of their respiration.
Assessing respiration is fairly straightforward. The patient’s respiration rate can be affected by anxiety so a
useful to avoid this is to check pulse first and after you have finished that, while still holding their pulse point,
check their respiration rate. Inconspicuous assessment avoids the patient changing their breathing because
they know they are being assessed which patients can sometimes do subconsciously. Through textbooks and
practical classes I have learned what to be aware of while assessing a patient’s respiratory rate. For example;
their normal breathing pattern, if and how their health problems are affecting their breathing, any medications
that could affect their respiratory rate and also the rate, depth, rhythm and quality of their breathing The
limitations to this vital sign though are to understand and know the different types of thermometers. Many
aspects can affect temperature such as exercise, age, stress and surrounding weather and environment. It is
important to make sure the patient is relaxed and hasn’t been doing strenuous activities shortly before being
assessed. For a healthy adult, the normal body temperature should be around 37°C. Anything over that is
considered a fever. Similar to the other vital signs though, everybody is different and someone might have a
slightly higher or lower temperature which is normal for them. There are many different types of
thermometers. There are oral, rectal, chemical, tympanic and temporal artery thermometers as well as more.
Depending on the person, different thermometers are used. Aspects such as being a child, not being able to
move, being asleep while your temperature needs to be taken can all affect which type of thermometer a
health care professional use. For example, if a patient is asleep then it is very invasive to use an oral
thermometer because you would have to open their mouth and then if they wake up, they would feel very
violated.