3: The Health History
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- 3.2: Health History Basic Concepts
- This page describes the communication process the nurse uses to collect subjective and objective patient data. It is vital to establish rapport with a patient before asking questions about sensitive topics to obtain accurate data regarding the mental, emotional, and spiritual aspects of a patient’s condition.
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- 3.8: Functional Health and Activities of Daily Living
- Information obtained when assessing functional health provides the nurse a holistic view of a patient’s human response to illness and life conditions. It is helpful to use an assessment framework, such as Gordon’s Functional Health Patterns, to organize interview questions according to evidence-based patterns of human responses.
Thumbnail: Medical History Form. (CC BY 2.0; Marco Verch via Flickr )