Step-By-Step Patient Assessment
By Roger G. Wootten BS, NREMT-P, EMS Coordinator, Northeast Alabama Community College

Veteran EMS instructors have likely seen EMT-B students overwhelmed from information overload. Some students are absolutely astounded at the bulk of information contained in an EMT-Basic course, mistakenly thinking it could not be too much more difficult than the first aid course they took somewhere several years ago. As instructors, we should seek instructional methods that help to alleviate information overload as much as possible.

Do you remember the step-by-step and concentrated thought processes that you encountered to learn how to drive a car? ( Think ) adjust the seat, ( think ) adjust the mirrors, ( think ) fasten your seatbelt, ( think ) apply the brake. You had to learn a particular order of events to pass a driver exam, but now, you hardly think about it. You probably just perform them without too much thought as to what you are doing.

Well, learning to perform patient assessment is not all that different. Consider trauma assessment for the patient with significant mechanism of injury. There are several steps required to perform the Scene Size-Up, then several more steps to perform the Initial Assessment, Focused History and Physical Exam (rapid trauma assessment), Detailed Physical Exam, and finally the Ongoing Assessment. In order to help build your students' confidence toward patient assessment, explain, demonstrate, and facilitate practice of only the Scene Size-Up until your students successfully perform it. Then have your students perform the Scene Size-Up while adding (and learning) the Initial Assessment. When these two processes of patient assessment can be performed acceptably, add the next processes, one at a time, until the student can perform comprehensive patient assessment acceptably.

By nurturing students to comprehensive levels of performance rather than trying to get them from “A-to-Z” too quickly, we can watch their skill and confidence grow to the point of not having to really think about the individual steps that makes the larger pieces of patient assessment all work together.

BACK TO CONTENTS PAGE

Do you have an article you would like to submit?
For more information view our submission guidelines.