Health Care Essay on Assessment or Screening Tools
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The aim of this paper is to provide information and/or assessment or screening tools that would help a primary care provider in the assessment of the chest, heart, or lungs of a client. When a person is in dire need of health care assistance from a health care provider, the person has to always be prepared in answering numerous questions from the healthcare provider. Historical record about the health of a patient is always an important source of information as it helps the health care provider to determine if the current state of the patient is influenced by a past record of treatment. The health care provider also has to know how the patient has been feeling lately with regards to their health problem; this allows the healthcare provider to navigate the probable problems and solutions as to what the patient is suffering from. Establishment of signs and symptoms is essential before diagnosis to avoid any misdiagnosis problems.
The healthcare provider also has to know if the patient has taken any meds before when the patient started experiencing weird feelings as far as the disease is concerned; this information is always helpful because some drugs always cause more risk to a patient than relief thereby augmenting the grossness of the disease. Most of the times, patients have been known to report basic signs to pharmacists in order for them to have over-the-counter drugs to save on the cost of having laboratory tests done to administer what condition they are suffering from. Laboratory tests are always primal as they are always accurate and they will always be a lead-determinant in determination of any infection. Family health records are also significant in disease determination. Some diseases are known to be genetically inherited, therefore, before prognosis, the primary care provider has to determine whether there is anyone (mostly the parent) in the patients family that has ever suffered the same disease.
The primary care provider also has to know about the patients contacts, for instance, for a communicable disease, the only means through which a person can contract an infection is by having close contact with an infected person. In such cases, there might also be reports about the disease being an epidemic in a particular area; other cases might also call for quarantine measures and isolation. Determination of the type of food a patient has been having in the recent years before diagnosis is relevant as some foods are known to be causative agents of augmenting health disorders; for instance, some foodstuffs are known in elevating heartburns. Obtaining information from patients about their previous health records has always been a problem for primary care providers due to lack of data storage equipments; as such health records are lost in disasters like fire, floods among others. Ethical issues have also been a problem facing primary care providers which limits the information they obtain from patients before prognosis.
X-rays can be used as screening tools of chest, heart and lung problems; this happens duly by detection of any fractures in the chest cavity and the lungs. The photographic images of these parts of the body help a primary care provider to establish the possible leads to an infection on the scanned area. Stethoscopes are solely used for detecting a patients heartbeat. When the heartbeat rate is abnormal; then there always is a problem with the body mechanism of the patient and as such, the problem has to be traced to save the patients life. The heart is a vital organ in the human body and anything that brings about interference to its performance limits the survival limit of a patient (Hiratzka, et al, 2010). Chest problems have a high dependency on the surrounding conditions of a patient; the surrounding of a patient that has a chest condition needs to be well-ventilated and aerated. Computed tomography can also be used in scanning the chest for patients who have lung cancer (Jaarsma, et al, 2012). Sputum cytology is another test that can be administered to patients who have lung cancer. Primary care providers have found it hard in administering screening tests on their patients due to lack of advanced equipment and lack of qualified personnel to use the equipment.
References
Hiratzka, L. F., Bakris, G. L., Beckman, J. A., Bersin, R. M., Carr, V. F., Casey, D. E., ... & Kouchoukos, N. T. (2010). 2010 ACCF/AHA/AATS/ACR/ASA/SCA/SCAI/SIR/STS/SVM guidelines for the diagnosis and management of patients with thoracic aortic disease. Journal of the American College of Cardiology, 55(14), e27-e129.
https://www.radiologyinfo.org/en/info.cfm?pg=screening-lungJaarsma, C., Leiner, T., Bekkers, S. C., Crijns, H. J., Wildberger, J. E., Nagel, E., ... & Schalla, S. (2012). Diagnostic performance of noninvasive myocardial perfusion imaging using single-photon emission computed tomography, cardiac magnetic resonance, and positron emission tomography imaging for the detection of obstructive coronary artery disease: a meta-analysis. Journal of the American College of Cardiology, 59(19), 1719-1728.
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