Nursing Assessment & Care (NURS50004)

In this subject students will develop knowledge and clinical skills to enable them to perform comprehensive health assessment across the lifespan using a culturally sensitive nursing framework. Students will gain an understanding of nurses’ roles and responsibilities in a variety of settings in which nursing takes place including; general practice, aged care, community and acute care settings. Students will be introduced to the recovery oriented model of nursing, develop skills in physical assessment techniques, data collection, problem identification, prioritisation, framing and solving and the documentation of data collected during health assessment. The focus in this subject is on assessment findings to enable students to identify variations to these. Throughout the subject there will be a focus on examining the health care system from the perspective of factors that can affect patient outcomes and the importance of identifying, critically appraising and integrating evidence into clinical practice. Using safety and quality as a framework students will examine trends in critical incidents that result in adverse outcomes for patients. They will also be introduced to emerging strategies in health care that seek to improve safety and quality and consider the role of the nurse in leading these efforts at a clinical and organisational level. Students will be exposed to a range of nursing skills, strategies for symptom management, selected diagnostic investigations and treatment interventions. Students commence the development of knowledge and skills related to therapeutic medication administration, the principles of the ‘quality use of medicines’ and drug administration for selected medications.

In the simulated learning laboratory, through facilitated clinical practice, students will develop skills relating to a comprehensive systems based patient physical and health assessment, infection prevention, basic nursing interventions and enteral medication administration.

During the professional experience placement, under the guidance of clinical educators and clinical preceptors, students will gain experience in settings that enable them to meet the learning objectives of this subject.

The major focus for the professional experience placement component of this subject is the integration of the principles of health assessment, safe and effective clinical decision-making and basic nursing interventions. On completion of the subject it is expected that students, while providing therapeutic interventions, are able to incorporate the further collection of health assessment data and adjust care accordingly for 1 to 2 patients.