Practice Assessment: Skin, Hair, and Nails Examination

Advanced practice nurses are required to have the skills and knowledge necessary to perform many different physical assessments and health examinations. In this course, you will demonstrate your abilities in this area by conducting various optional examinations on a volunteer “patient.”

ORDER NOW FOR CUSTOMIZED SOLUTION PAPERS

In preparation for the Comprehensive (Head-to-Toe) Physical Assessment due in Week 9, it is recommended that you practice conducting an assessment of the skin, hair, and nails this week.

Note: This is an optional practice physical assessment.

To Prepare

Arrange an appropriate time and setting with your volunteer “patient” to perform a skin, hair, and nails examination.
Download and review the Skin, Hair, and Nails Student Checklist and Key Points, provided in this week’s Learning Resources, and review the Seidel’s Guide to Physical Examinationonline media.

Optional Lab Assignment

Perform the skin, hair, and nails examination, covering all of the areas listed in the checklist.

Properly identifying the cause and type of a patient’s skin condition involves a process of elimination known as differential diagnosis. Using this process, a health professional can take a given set of physical abnormalities, vital signs, health assessment findings, and patient descriptions of symptoms, and incrementally narrow them down until one diagnosis is determined as the most likely cause.

In this Lab Assignment, you will examine several visual representations of various skin conditions, describe your observations, and use the techniques of differential diagnosis to determine the most likely condition.

To Prepare

Review the Skin Conditions document provided in this week’s Learning Resources, and select one condition to closely examine for this Lab Assignment.
Consider the abnormal physical characteristics you observe in the graphic you selected. How would you describe the characteristics using clinical terminologies?
Explore different conditions that could be the cause of the skin abnormalities in the graphics you selected.
Consider which of the conditions is most likely to be the correct diagnosis, and why.
Search the Walden library for one evidence-based practice, peer-reviewed article based on the skin condition you chose for this Lab Assignment.
Review the Comprehensive SOAP Exemplar found in this week’s Learning Resources to guide you as you prepare your SOAP note.
Download the SOAP Template found in this week’s Learning Resources, and use this template to complete this Lab Assignment.

The Lab Assignment

Choose one skin condition graphic (identify by number in your Chief Complaint) to document your assignment in the SOAP (Subjective, Objective, Assessment, and Plan) note format rather than the traditional narrative style. Refer to Chapter 2 of the Sullivan text and the Comprehensive SOAP Template in this week’s Learning Resources for guidance. Remember that not all comprehensive SOAP data are included in every patient case.
Use clinical terminologies to explain the physical characteristics featured in the graphic. Formulate a differential diagnosis of three to five possible conditions for the skin graphic that you chose. Determine which is most likely to be the correct diagnosis and explain your reasoning using at least three different references, one reference from current evidence-based literature from your search and two different references from this week’s Learning Resources.

By Day 7 of Week 4

Submit your Lab Assignment.

Submission and Grading Information

To submit your completed Assignment for review and grading, do the following:

Please save your Assignment using the naming convention “WK4Assgn1+last name+first initial.(extension)” as the name.
Click the Week 4 Assignment 1 Rubric to review the Grading Criteria for the Assignment.
Click the Week 4 Assignment 1 You will also be able to “View Rubric” for grading criteria from this area.
Next, from the Attach File area, click on the Browse My Computer Find the document you saved as “WK4Assgn1+last name+first initial.(extension)” and click Open.
If applicable: From the Plagiarism Tools area, click the checkbox for I agree to submit my paper(s) to the Global Reference Database.
Click on the Submitbutton to complete your submission.