Discussion: Assessing the Ears, Nose, and Throat

Most ear, nose, and throat conditions that arise in non-critical care settings are minor in nature. However, subtle symptoms can sometimes escalate into life-threatening conditions that require prompt assessment and treatment. Nurses conducting assessments of the ears, nose, and throat must be able to identify the small differences between life-threatening conditions and benign ones. For instance, if a patient with a sore throat and a runny nose also has inflamed lymph nodes, the inflammation is probably due to the pathogen causing the sore throat rather than a case of throat cancer. With this knowledge and a sufficient patient health history, a nurse would not need to escalate the assessment to a biopsy or an MRI of the lymph nodes, but would probably perform a simple strep test.

In this Discussion, you consider case studies of abnormal findings from patients in a clinical setting. You determine what history should be collected from the patients, what physical exams and diagnostic tests should be conducted, and formulate a differential diagnosis with several possible conditions.

Note: By Day 1 of this week, your Instructor will have assigned you to one of the following specific case studies for this Discussion. Also, your Discussion post should be in the Episodic/Focused SOAP Note format, (see soap file) rather than the traditional narrative style Discussion posting format. Refer to Chapter 2 of the Sullivan text and the Episodic/Focused SOAP Template in the Week 5 Learning Resources for guidance. Remember that all Episodic/Focused SOAP notes have specific data included in every patient case.

Case 2: Focused Throat Exam
Lily is a 20-year-old student at the local community college. When some of her friends and classmates told her about an outbreak of flu-like symptoms sweeping her campus over the past two weeks, Lily figured she shouldn’t take her three-day sore throat lightly. Your clinic has treated a few cases similar to Lily’s. All the patients reported decreased appetite, headaches, and pain with swallowing. As Lily recounts these symptoms to you, you notice that she has a runny nose and a slight hoarseness in her voice but doesn’t sound congested.

To prepare:

With regard to the case study you were assigned:

· Review this week’s Learning Resources and consider the insights they provide.

· Consider what history would be necessary to collect from the patient.

· Consider what physical exams and diagnostic tests would be appropriate to gather more information about the patient’s condition. How would the results be used to make a diagnosis?

· Identify at least 5 possible conditions that may be considered in a differential diagnosis for the patient.

Write: 

an episodic/focused note about the patient in the case study to which you were assigned using the episodic/focused note template provided in week 5 resources. Provide evidence from the literature to support diagnostic tests that would be appropriate for each case. 

List five different possible conditions for the patient’s differential diagnosis and justify why you selected each.

1. Please share how physical assessment is performed in your practice area. How do you determine what type of physical assessment is appropriate in caring for your patients? Do you perform complete head to toe assessments, or are they typically more focused exams? (If you do not currently work in a patient care setting, you may reflect on observations from a clinical experience or prior work setting.)
2. Based on your observations, do you feel that patient assessments performed in practice are as thorough as they should be? Explain your answer.
3. Reflect on the assessment you performed for the video assignment. Perhaps you might compare your performance now, to how it might have been different when you were a brand new nurse? Or share something you learned (or were reminded of) by participating in this activity?