Purpose
As a family nurse practitioner, you must possess excellent physical assessment skills. This alternative writing assignment mirrors the discussion content of the debriefing session and will allow the student to expand their knowledge of physical health assessment principles specific to the advanced practice role.

Course Outcomes

This assignment is guided by the following Course Outcomes (COs):

1. Apply advanced practice nursing knowledge to collecting health history information and physical examination findings for various patient populations. (PO 1, 2)
2. Differentiate normal and abnormal health history and physical examination findings. (PO 1, 2)
3. Adapt health history and physical examination skills to the developmental, gender-related, age-specific, and special population needs of the individual patient. (PO 1, 2)

The purposes of this assignment are to: (a) identify and articulate advanced assessment health history and physical examination techniques which are relevant to a focused body system (CO 1), (b) differentiate normal and abnormal findings with regard to a disease or condition that impacts the body system (CO 2), and (c) adapt advanced assessment skills if necessary to suit the needs of specific patient populations (CO 4).

NOTE: You are to complete this alternative writing assignment ONLY if you had not participated or do not plan to participate in a debriefing session for the given week.

Due Date: This alternative written assignment is due no later than the Sunday of the week in which you did not attend the weekly debriefing session. The standard MSN Participation Late Assignment policy applies to this assignment.

Preparing the Paper:

1. Select a focused body system from the weekly lesson which corresponds with the week of the written assignment.
2. Carefully read and review the selected body system in your course textbooks.
3. Incorporate at least one scholarly peer-reviewed journal article that relates to the body system. It may be useful to identify an article that relates to a disease that impacts the body system.
4. The paper must clearly articulate the relevance of advanced physical assessment skills, techniques, application of advanced practice knowledge, and assessment modification (when necessary) to accommodate for specific patient populations.
5. Provide concluding statements that should summarize key points of the overall assignment content.
6. In-text citations and reference page(s) must be written using proper APA format (6th edition).