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Principles of Patient and Family Assessment

Nursing assessment comprising physical, psychosocial, and spiritual domains is essential for planning palliative care. Such assessment involves input from the patient, family, and all members of the interdisciplinary team, with information shared verbally as well as in the patient’s health records. Ongoing, detailed, and comprehensive assessment is requisite to identifying the complex and changing needs and goals of patients facing chronic or life-threatening illness and those of their families. In this chapter, goals, techniques, and tools are discussed for assessing patients and families during four timeframes occurring during chronic and life-threatening illnesses: diagnosis, during treatments, when treatment is over, and during active dying. A case study threads through the chapter to illustrate the application of these principles and techniques in culturally appropriate ways.