Thesis (Ph.D.)--Marshall University, 2009. / Title from document title page. Includes abstract. Document formatted into pages: contains ix, 123 p. Includes bibliographical references p. 97-108.

Thesis (M.S.)--Boston University

The study examines nursing assessment in the context of questioning how nurses' encounters with patients become occasions for nursing. The focus of the study is on those occasions which constitute nursing assessment, in recognition that these occasions cannot be detached from other aspects of nurses' conduct. To undertake this examination of nursing assessment, I have drawn on the work of Michel Foucault, with an approach to field research and the analysis of discourse which has developed from contemporary writings on communication, anthropology, ethnomethodology and ethnography. With its focus on examining how power effects are constituted within an acute medical ward, the position developed in the thesis seeks to integrate critical thinking in ethnography with a post-structuralist problematising of 'detachment' as an everyday feature of social conduct. There are three parts to the study. The first part entails a textual analysis of how nursing assessment has been written in the literature. Nursing assessment has been conceptualised as a component of the nursing process; as a technical and cognitive activity. Representing nursing assessment in this way raises issues of knowledge and power. Writing nursing in terms of information processing, problem-solving 'models' is however less a representation of nursing reality and more a discursive practice, one with its own domain and locus of action. The nursing process detaches nursing assessment as a technology, separable from the organisation of patient care and autonomous from the social, but one designed to reconstitute the social through making nursing thinkable in a particular epistemic space. The second part of the study, a detailed examination of the care of old people in an acute medical ward, suggests the particular development of nursing assessment as a cognitive and technical activity overlooks the heterogenous conditions in which nursing is practised, in which it is being written and in which the conditions of detachment that the nursing process, once in process, helps produce and reproduce. These include involving an instrumentalrationalist approach to research on health services, a managerialist climate which seeks to make nursing 'visible' in relation to cost and time; the professionalisation of nursing, which impacts on nurses as a call for nurses to make nursing 'professional', rational and distinct from other practices; and, instituted through fashionable talk of customer care and the care of the subject, a heightening of persons as individuated, accountable, knowing subjects. The analysis shows how the disposal of elderly persons is effected by nurses through a 'constituting of classes' and explicates the motility of these classes in response to the aforementioned pressures. The final part of the thesis develops these themes. The nursing process appears to give the burden of knowing to the nurse as expert, always saving itself from appearing to be a congenitally failing technology through appeals for more and better training. Far from this being so, I illustrate how the burden of knowing falls upon the person; how as patient, persons must detach themselves from their everyday experience and seek modes of conduct appropriate to their disposal. By writing nurses as rational, scientific and professional practitioners, I suggest how the nursing process has been developed as a control technology which both disciplines patients to help accomplish their disposal and manage nurses through the institution of new forms of accountability and self-discipline.

Numerous assessment modes have evolved throughout the years, but only a few of them have been extensively studied in nursing education, particularly in Greece. The aim of this study is to review educators’ and students’ beliefs regarding assessment in the Greek nursing education system. Special attention shall be devoted to the faculty curriculum and the learning and teaching procedures. For this purpose, a descriptive retrospective cohort study was carried out in the nursing faculties of two of the eight Greek universities that teach nursing, with one cohort being that of the students and the second that of the educators. A questionnaire survey in combination with qualitative interviews were used to investigate the views of students and educators about the assessment of learning, and factors that may influence those views. The results indicated that both educators and students were familiar with more traditional teaching and assessment procedures. Both students and educators believe that there are serious problems in the organisation of the curriculum and these may cause difficulty in the development of alternative models of teaching and assessment. The feelings about the educational environment and the relationships between students and educators were mixed. Finally, positive relationships seem to play a very important role in students’ learning and their satisfaction with assessment procedures and the educational environment, and it is suggested that these could be partially managed by mandatory attendance at theory courses, for both educators and students. Based on the overall findings of the study, a model of the context of effective assessment in Greek nursing education was proposed. To conclude, it is suggested that nursing education in Greece should seek to adopt more alternative modes of assessment to promote self-directed learning, and that audit is needed of teaching and assessment procedures for a more effective curriculum in future.

by Lo Po Hung, Gordon. / Thesis submitted in: December 1998. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1999. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 94-107). / Abstract and questionnaire also in Chinese. / ACKNOWLEDGMENTS / ABSTRACT (ENGLISH & CHINESE VERSION) --- p.ii / LIST OF TABLES --- p.vi / CHAPTER / Chapter 1. --- INTRODUCTION --- p.1 / Chapter 2. --- LITERATURE REVIEW --- p.3 / Nursing Assessment --- p.3 / Purpose of Nursing Assessment --- p.4 / The Importance of Nursing Assessment --- p.5 / The Influence of the Concepts of Health and Holism on Comprehensive Nursing Assessment --- p.7 / Philosophical Perspectives on Nursing Assessment --- p.8 / The Incorporation of Nursing Theories or Models into Nursing Assessment --- p.10 / Implementation of Comprehensive Nursing Assessment --- p.12 / Areas Included in the Comprehensive Nursing Assessment --- p.13 / Biophysical Assessment --- p.14 / Psychological Assessment --- p.16 / Sociocultural Assessment --- p.19 / Spiritual Assessment --- p.21 / Summary --- p.24 / Chapter 3. --- METHOD --- p.25 / Design --- p.26 / Sampling --- p.28 / Data Collection Methods --- p.32 / Data Collection Procedure --- p.37 / Pilot study --- p.39 / Reliability --- p.41 / Ethical Considerations --- p.43 / Data Analysis --- p.44 / Chapter 4. --- RESULTS --- p.47 / Sample Characteristics --- p.47 / Mean Scores for Comprehensive Assessment --- p.50 / Items with Higher and Lower Scores in the Questionnaires and the Checklists of Nursing Records --- p.53 / Items with Higher and Lower Means in Each Category in Comprehensive Assessment Questionnaire --- p.57 / Differences in the Total and Category Assessment Mean Scores --- p.59 / Factors Affecting the Implementation Comprehensive Nursing Assessment --- p.64 / Suggested Interventions to Enable Nurses to Perform Comprehensive Nursing Assessment --- p.67 / Chapter 5. --- DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION --- p.71 / The Performance of Comprehensive Nursing Assessment --- p.71 / The Focus of the Assessment within Each Component of Nursing Assessment --- p.74 / Factors Affecting the Implementation of Comprehensive Nursing Assessment --- p.81 / Limitations --- p.87 / Implications for Practice --- p.89 / Recommendations for Future Research --- p.91 / Conclusion --- p.92 / REFERENCES --- p.94

Nursing assessment is the foundation of the nursing process. The focus and type of data collected, during such assessment is central to the effectiveness of the diagnostic process and subsequent planned nursing interventions. Whilst there is a multiplicity of factors that impact upon the diagnostic process, eminent nurse theorists espouse a relationship between assessment formats and diagnostic accuracy. This study evaluates the effectiveness of two types of assessment formats by addressing the following questions. When student and registered nurses use a Gordons Functional Health Pattern (GFHP) assessment format compared to using a Review of Biological Systems (ROBS) assessment format is there a difference in: (1) the number and type of diagnoses identified? and (2) the number of criteria achieved within the Standards for Nursing Care (ANF, 1989)?A developed case study with verified diagnoses was used. Professional actors played the part of the client and followed a standard script. Volunteer student and registered nurses (N=100) were randomly assigned to the two types of assessment formats. They were required to conduct an assessment of the client and state the nursing diagnoses. Data were analysed using Multivariate Analysis of Variance.Results indicated that when both groups of nurses used the GFHP format they stated significantly more correct and more diverse categories of diagnoses and significantly fewer diagnoses which were classified as being incorrect and medical, than when they used the ROBS format. In addition, when student and registered nurses used the GFHP format, they elicited significantly more information that complied with the criteria outlined within the Standards for Nursing Care (ANF, 1989), than when they used the ROBS format.The findings of this study indicate that both student and registered nurses are guided by the cues on the assessment ++ / format. Therefore, the choice and design of nursing assessment forms are critical as they affect diagnostic accuracy.

Diss. (sammanfattning) Karlstad : Karlstads universitet, 2008. / Härtill 4 uppsatser på engelska.

Ph.D. (Nursing Education)--University of the Witwatersrand, Faculty of Health Sciences, 2012 / The sciences of restorative nursing are unknown in South Africa, leaving patients with restorative needs with rather unpredictable outcomes. This study investigated the validity of four prospective nursing scales to be used for patients requiring nursing where the focus is to improve their functionality. Such patients are usually found in sub- and non-acute nursing units and suffering with chronic debilitating diseases, mental illness or recovering from trauma. Typically they are in need of rehabilitation, palliative care, geriatric services or long-term care to restore or maintain their functional independence. Inspired by the theories of nursing pioneers such as Florence Nightingale, the definitive nurse who was also an astute healthcare reform statistician, as well as Ida Jean Orlando, better known as the originator of the nursing process, the researcher, a general medical practitioner, has explored the intuitive knowledge of experienced nurses to document the links between their observations, interpretations and predictions of patient functioning. This information was used to develop four interrelated nursing scales to be used routinely by nurses to provide raw patient scores on patient functional changes. As nursing intuition was used to develop the measures, the working hypothesis was that the scales are considered valid. Therefore, the approach towards the study was deductive in nature, seeking the evidence to confirm this assumption. As the purpose of the study was to offer nurses useful scales to provide validated empirical evidence of human functional status, the research question was how scientific evidence can be used to conclude that these four scales have indeed the integrity to deliver a measurement function to the nurses. The researcher’s hypothesis of validating routine nursing measures is supported by two concepts: nursing utility and constructs validity. If nursing utility fail, construct validity is of no value to the nursing profession. With this in mind, the v study objectives were to first validate nursing utility using a qualitative design to collect descriptive data from nurses who have implemented the scales. Once positive findings were reported on the usefulness of the scales to the nursing profession, then construct validity was explored using the Rasch measurement model to qualitatively analyse the scale’s raw data collected in various sub- and non-acute nursing facilities. One scale was discarded, and three showed good to excellent results on both utility and construct validity. It has provided the restorative nursing sciences with a methodology to routinely collect patient-based empirical evidence for parametric analysis. In so doing, it delivered the missing link in Orlando’s nursing process theory; it also confirmed Nightingale’s theory that healthcare evidence provided routinely by nurse is the stepping stone for healthcare reform, provided it is useful, meaningful and valid. The ultimate beneficiaries of this new knowledge are patients who previously would have had unpredictable outcomes resulting in a poor prognosis.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Rhode Island, 2004. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 227-239).

Thesis (PhDEducation)--University of South Australia, 2002.