Analysis Of The Doorway Assessment

The clinical setting can be terrifying for a nursing student. Nursing students are not only concerned about properly caring for patients, but they have just as much concern regarding the techniques of how to properly address patients and their families in a manner which conveys the care and concern they wish to possess when they become registered nurses. Certainly, heightened levels of anxiety may inhibit a student nurse’s ability to make sound judgment calls with regard to appropriate nursing interventions (Foley, 2016).

Foley (2016) recommends a method called The Doorway Assessment as a tool to help nursing students overcome the anxiety many of them experience on their first day of clinical. Foley (2016) describes The Doorway Assessment

For instance, our doorway assessment led to a heightened awareness of the other components involved in a patient’s care. Upon an individual assessment of my assigned patient and the clinical surroundings, I noticed a note on his door explaining the importance of good hand hygiene. The note also alerted those entering the room to not enter if they felt sick or if they have been sick recently; the note was had written so it could be assumed it was written by a family member. Additionally, on the patient’s dry erase board, there was a short narrative about the patient and his life prior to his illness. The more critical issues observed was that the patient’s brain injury resulted in complete paralysis, which placed him at a risk for falls; thus all four side rails of the patient’s bed were raised. All of these observations prompted me to be engaged with the patient, his mother and baby sister, his nurse, and the speech and physical

It was intimidating and a bit scary, but instinctively I tried to help the patient and his family in any manner I could. As the day progressed, I had less anxiety when administering medications to the patient, and I felt more at ease with checking on the patient and his family to ensure they had no unmet needs. Because of our initial encounter with the doorway assessment, providing patient care was not as frightening as past first days of clinical have been. This resulted in a quite interesting post clinical conference where every student had something interesting to discuss regarding the patients they cared