Advanced Physical Assessment Module

Course Overview

They have been designed for emergency nurse practitioners, primary care nurse practitioners, community matrons, night-nurse practitioners, physiotherapists, occupational therapists, and nurses working in pre-surgical clinics, day surgery, cardiac and respiratory clinics, critical care outreach teams and walk-in centres.

The aim of these modules are to enable you, as the experienced practitioner, to develop your physical assessment skills and apply this to your clinical context. As the autonomous practitioner, you will be equipped with the advanced knowledge base, communication skills, and safe clinical examination skills to make confident autonomous, effective and evidence based patient care decisions. You will also be able to undertake an autonomous assessment to start planning appropriate care or referral for your patients.

After completion of the module you will be able to:

• Develop knowledge and skills in order to start to facilitate a safe holistic patient assessment
• Apply your knowledge of anatomy and physiology in conjunction with physical assessment to each body system
• Use more advanced communication techniques, evidence based knowledge and critical thinking in order to identify patient needs
• Identify presenting complaint and synthesise findings from physical  examination and assessment and then relates this to underlying pathophysiology
• Use history taking and clinical findings in order to aid with differential diagnosis
• Reflect on prior professional experience to aid with decision making
• Collaborate with colleagues in assessment and referral of patient.

This module will cover the following areas:

• Anatomy and physiology review
• History taking and documentation
• Physical assessment skills- inspection, auscultation, percussion and palpation
• Systems covered- Respiratory, Cardiovascular, Abdomen, Neurology, Muscular Skeletal and ear, nose and throat

Teaching dates

Spring Module 2025 (Induction half day 8th January)

• 16, 17, 30, 31 January
• 13, 27 and 28 February
• 13 March
• 27 or 28 March Practice OSCE (assigned at start)
• 24 or 25 April Final OSCE

Summer Module 2025 (induction half day 8th January)

• 15, 16, 22, 23 May
• 5, 19 and 20 June
• 4 July
• 10 or 11 July Practice OSCE (assigned at start)
• 7 or 8 August Final OSCE

Learning and teaching

Learning and teaching will have a problem orientated focus through guided study and case scenarios in order to develop and reinforce lifelong learning perspectives for clinical skills. This will be done through guided on line learning supported by narrated presentations and online demonstration videos for the student to access at any time. Students will access face to face clinical assessment skill demonstrations and supervision from teachers. Students will then be given the opportunity to develop these learnt assessment skills so it is essential that the student has a supervisor in practice and has secured an appropriate practice setting.

Study days will give the opportunity for development, application and reflection of clinical examination skills to aid with diagnosis and plan care / referral.

Our level 6 module is meant as a starting point to advanced practice.

The level 7 modules need to demonstrate autonomous practice and clinical reasoning skills.

Module 3512: introduction to Physical Assessment (15 credit Assessed with clinical exams No assessment of clinical competence in your work area. No portfolio.

Module 4512: Advanced Physical Assessment (15 credit Assessed with clinical exams No assessment of clinical competence in your work area. No portfolio).

Module 4502: Physical Assessment Decision making and Management (30 credit Assessed with clinical exam and clinical portfolio demonstrating clinical competence in your work area, please note the portfolio is due 2.5 months after final OSCE, this may be important if wanting to undertake the January Non medical prescriber module).

For additional information and timetables please contact H.Oliver@mdx.ac.uk

Assessment

Assessment will be 100% OSCE based for level 6 and mix of OSCE and Portfolio for level 7. OSCE is based on all the clinical examination skills learnt as well as history taking and a written paper based on anatomy, physiology and clinical scenarios.