Additional Information Required To Assess the Patient’s Weight-Related Health Further

To better understand this patient’s presentation, additional information must be obtained from her. Information on her anxiety about onset and severity will enable the caregivers to rule out mental health illnesses as a causal factor for their weight. Information on the patient’s family history may help ascertain whether her condition is a consequence of heredity and not a systemic pathology. The family history of mental health illnesses will also help in ruling out other undiagnosed mental health illnesses that may be apparent in the patient and causal to her condition. Medical and medication history is also valuable in assessing the patient’s weight-related health. Information on the medical history indicates health conditions that the patients had experienced earlier. This information informs on the current condition or an undiagnosed underlying health condition that causes weight loss in the patient. Information on medication history can also advise on any past health condition the patients may have experienced. This information may enable a better and more elaborate understanding of the patient’s weight health and information on causal and risk factors for the patient’s condition.

Questions to Ask To Gather More Information

Being underweight presents specific health risks to individuals. Reproductive dysfunctionalities, the propensity to infectious and non-communicable diseases, and mental health illnesses such as depression are some health risks associated with being underweight. Reproductive constitutionality seen in skinny females includes irregular menstruation, infertility due to hormonal imbalances, and miscarriages or premature births. These presentations are disproportionately seen in females with lower BMI (Boutari et al., 2020). Information on these risks can be obtained during the subjective assessment of this patient. Information on the patient’s menstrual cycle and other aspects of her reproductive health can be obtained by asking when she last menstruated, the nature of her menstrual cycles, and the duration. She can also be asked if she has ever been pregnant before and if she is optimistic about the pregnancy’s success. Information on the patient’s propensity to develop infectious and non-communicable diseases can be obtained from the medical and medication history of the patients. In this regard, she can be asked when she last fell sick and the nature of the illnesses she experienced. Since some of these questions are sensitive, the assessment process should be private. The caregiver should also explain why the patients are asking those questions. The questions should be straightforward, and the tone should be consistent as with other questions.

The specific questions that can be asked to gather more information from the patient are: how many times the patient has felt sick or experienced an illness in the past six months, what was the length of the patient’s last two periods, and whether any member of her immediate family has a lean body mass, or has any mental health issue.

Conclusion

Assessment enables a better understanding of the patient’s clinical presentation. The assessment process also gives information on the health risks associated with the primary presentation. As seen in the case study, assessment enables the unearthing of many apparent undiagnosed issues in a patient. All nurses need to have exceptional assessment skills as a care strategy that enhances the quality of care provision.

References

Boutari, C., Pappas, P., Mintziori, G., Nigdelis, M., Athanasiadis, L., Goulis, D., & Mantzoros, C. (2020). The effect of underweight on female and male reproduction. Metabolism, 107,