Chapter 9: Patient Assessment Flashcards
The secondary muscles of respiration. They include the neck muscles (sternocleimastoids), the chest pectoralis major muscles, and the abdominal muscles.
Accessory Muscles
Any deviation from alert and oriented to person, place, time, and event, or any deviation from a patient’s normal baseline mental status; may signal disease in the central nervous system or elsewhere in the body.
Altered Mental Status
To listen to sounds within and organ with a stethoscope.
Auscultate
A method of assessing the level of consciousness by determining whether the patient is awake and alert, responsive to verbal stimuli or pain, or unresponsive; used principally early in the assessment process.
AVPU Scale
A slow heart rate, less than 60 beats/min.
Bradycardia
An indication of air movement in the lungs, usually assessed with a stethoscope.
Breath Sounds
A test that evaluates distal circulatory system function by squeezing (blanching” blood from an area such as a nail bed and watching the speed of its return after releasing the pressure.
Capillary Refill
A noninvasive method to quickly and efficiently provide information on a patient’s ventilatory status, circulation, and metabolism; effectively measures the concentration of carbon dioxide in expired air over time.
Capnography
A component of air that typically makes up 0.3% of air at sea level; also a waste product exhaled during expiration by the respiratory system.
Carbon Dioxide
The reason a patient called for help; also, the patient’s response to questions such as “What’s wrong?” or “What happened?”
Chief Complaint
In incident management, the position that oversees the incident, establishes the objectives and priorities, and develops a response plan.
Command
The delicate membrane that lines the eyelids and covers the exposed surface of the eye.
Conjunctiva
Crackling, rattling breath sounds signaling fluid in the air spaces of the lungs; formerly called rales.
Crackles
A grating or grinding sensation caused by fractured bone ends or joints rubbing together; also air bubbles under the skin that produce a crackling sound or crinkly feeling.
Crepitus
A blue-gray skin color that is caused by a reduced level of oxygen in the blood.
Cyanosis
A mnemonic for assessment in which each area of the body is evaluated for deformities, contusions, abrasions, punctures/penetrations, burns, tenderness, lacerations, and swelling.
DCAP-BTLS
Characterized by light or profuse sweating.
Diaphoretic
The pressure that remains in the arteries during the relaxing phase of the heart’s cycle (diastole) when the left ventricle is at rest.
Diastolic Pressure
Any injury that prevents the patient from noticing other injuries he or she may have, even severe injuries; for example, a painful femur or tibia fracture that prevents the patient from noticing back pain associated with a spinal fracture.
Distracting Injury
Shortness of breath or difficulty breathing.
Dyspnea
A disease of the lungs in which there is extreme dilation and eventual destruction of the pulmonary alveoli with poor exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide; it is one form of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease
Emphysema
A type of physical assessment typically performed on patients who have sustained no significant mechanisms of injury or on responsive medical patients. This type of examination is based on the chief complaint and focuses on one body system or part.
Focused assessment
Damage to tissue as the result of exposure to cold; frozen or partially frozen body parts.
Frostbite
The overall initial impression that determines the priority for patient care; based on the patient’s surroundings, the mechanism of injury, signs and symptoms, and the chief complaint.
General Impression
The time from injury to definitive care, during which treatment of shock and traumatic injuries should occur because survival potential is best; also called the Golden Period.
Golden Hour
Involuntary muscle contractions (spasm) of the abdominal wall to minimize the pain of movement and protect the inflamed abdomen; a sign of peritonitis.
Guarding
A step within the patient assessment process that provides detail about the patient’s chief complaint and an account of the patient’s vital signs and symptoms.
History Taking
Blood pressure that is higher than the normal range
Hypertension
Blood pressure that is lower than the normal range.
Hypotension
A condition in which the internal or core body temperature falls below 95 degrees F. (35 C)
Hypothermia
Yellow skin or sclera that is cause by liver disease or dysfunction.
Jaundice
The forces, or energy transmission, applied to the body that cause injury.
Mechanism of Injury
Widening of the nostrils, indicating that there is an airway obstruction.
Nasal Flaring
The general type of illness a patient is experiencing.
Nature of Illness
