Gordons Health Assessment Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Gordons Health Assessment - Essay Example These functions relate to one another and can be used as evidence in making decisions on the outcomes of patient care. There are other factors that will affect the reliability of data that can be gathered in making health assessments that will be presented during the interview and physical assessment of the patient. Other factors such as physiological, psychological and even cultural factors can influence on how much or how little of the data can be gathered from the patient (Functional Health patterns, n.d.). Every patient will have different reactions when being interviewed about their health. Some patients may exhibit feelings of anger towards their health care provider stemming from previous encounters with other health care practitioners that left them with a bad impression. There is also the cultural aspect of the patient where they may find certain questions and medical practices opposed to their culture, tradition and beliefs. Others would be depressed about being or felling ill and refuse to cooperate. There is also the physical condition of illnesses where patients may be in too much pain or cannot give coherent answers because of adverse reactions to medication. The everyday stresses in the workplace can also affect the nurse that will be making the assessment. Personal conflicts and beliefs on culture and ethnicities can influence the way the assessment is being handled (Morrison & Ashley-Coe, 2001). Preparing for the interview is also a key element in making health assessments. Patient interviews need to be carefully planned. Interviewers need to get their patients' trust so that they can gather information as accurately as they can. As with any interview, it is important to maintain eye contact and avoid possible distractions. Learning from the patients' charts can give interviewers ideas on how to formulate questions for the assessment (Jarvis, 2004). It is the understanding of all these factors that can make a good health assessment, coupled with the theory of functional health patterns by Gordon. These functional health patterns divided into eleven subcategories can help in the evaluation of a patient's physical, emotional and psychological health. Case Study Maria is a female patient aged 60 years old with a history of diabetes and hypertension. For the past few months, the patient complained of having stomach cramps or indigestion and difficulty in sleeping. She also reported self medicating these cramps with over the counter medication but the symptoms was never alleviated. But she was not cooperative enough to submit herself to other lab testing in order to find out the cause of her stomach discomfort. She has been very diligent in taking her diabetic and hypertensive medication, but her blood sugar and blood pressure has been erratic. She attributes this to the discomfort that she has been feeling recently. The patient also reported having difficulty with her bowel movement where there were days where she could not void, the longest period being five days. There were two areas that had an impact on the patients' functional health or ability. These were Elimination and Sleep-rest. These two factors caused considerable discomfort to the patient and may be symptoms of underlying illnesses. For this, a comprehensive geriatric health assessment can be used in order to find