Focused assessment is a major component in healthcare practice needed for planning as well as for provision of patient-centered care. Focused assessment collects essential information regarding the situation of the patient and helps in identifying a new symptom or developed change. Focused assessments have been used by healthcare teams in recognizing and responding to different patient problems and rapidly changing particular situations. Considerably, healthcare teams rely on focused assessment for clinical judgment to realize the future and current patient need. For instance, an assessment of the causes of a particular patient’s fall may lead to preventive measures. The assessment may include medication review, fall history, environmental and functional assessments, and physical examination.
The goal of focused assessment is to determine the impacts of healthcare on the desired outcomes as well as assess the extent to which healthcare adheres to the effective processes (McCutcheon & Doyle, 2018). Identifying inefficiencies to influence change is linked with quality improvement and safety of healthcare. The assessment can track the progress of quality improvement initiatives to prove that the improvements are successful. The focused assessment offers patient-centered care, which results in patient satisfaction and better healthcare outcomes.
The focused assessment brings a teamwork approach after the initial assessment, where the problem is identified, and a discussion is done to develop ideas. This has fostered team collaboration and working together to develop health promotion and workplace satisfaction. For instance, the nurse communicates to the medical team and allied health team about a certain symptom to ensure appropriate action is taken (AHRQ Patient Safety, 2015). Understanding a patient’s pertinent changes enables recognition of what is normal versus abnormal body physiology through a critical thinking skill that allows the identification of appropriate interventions.
It is related to focused nursing assessment, which seeks to provide essential information on the relevance of detailed nursing assessment. The focused nursing assessment identifies the problems of a patient to offer the patients with timely and consistent care relating to the current concerns. Focused nursing assessment enables the nurses to have a skilled and thorough assessment of the patient’s signs, the process to discover any change and how the symptoms develop. These aid in the development of effective and differential diagnosis.
