9+ Health Assessment Templates – PDF, DOC
Do you ever wonder how physicians or anyone in the healthcare team are able to diagnose a person’s illness or condition correctly or more accurately without needlessly risking or aggravating the patient’s current health status? Well, the answer lies in the use of well-designed health assessment forms or templates.
Yes, you heard that right. A simple assessment template or form may already mean a matter of life and death when it comes to disease management. So if you are a hospital or clinic manager, you have come to the right place to take a look at different examples of health assessment templates that you can base your own institution’s health assessment forms from. Make sure to read until the end of this article so that you will have a more comprehensive understanding on how health assessment templates are created and how you can apply this knowledge in creating a good assessment tool for your own hospital or clinic.
What is a Health Assessment Template?
A health assessment is a process of evaluating an individual’s current health status through detailed health history taking and the use of physical inspection, palpation, percussion and auscultation (hearing breath and heart sounds). Health assessments are usually done by a licensed physician or anyone who is part of the healthcare team like nurses, surgeons, consultants, etc). The findings of a health needs assessment are usually written in a health assessment form or template.
As its name implies, health assessment templates are typically used in the healthcare setting. Examples include hospitals, clinics, health spas, mental health institutions, traditional and alternative medicine clinics, rehabilitation centers, emergency rooms.
And when health assessment forms are used by these health institutions or organizations, they will often follow a standard template format. Some health assessment form format will resemble a tabular questionnaire where the physician fills outs the answers or observations he or she obtains from the patient. But most often, the best health assessment templates are those that will incorporate both the patient’s input and the physician’s actual observations written on the printed form. This type of assessment form is preferred since it does not limit the physician from choosing among pre-determined answers in a questionnaire.
Creating a health assessment template itself is done using word processing software tool or through the use of various kinds of desktop publishing software programs like Microsoft Publisher and Adobe InDesign.
Check Out These Examples of Health Assessment Templates
As promised, we have included multiple examples of health assessment templates that any hospital or clinic administrator may use and base their own institution’s health assessment forms from. Most of these templates are PDF templates so make sure that you have the Adobe Acrobat Reader installed on your computer before you can download and view the template. You may also see nursing assessment templates.
Adult Primary Care Health Assessment Template
ahrq.gov
Community Mental Health Assessment Template
ctacny.org
Early Childhood Health Assessment Record Template
dhhs.nh.gov
Guidelines in Creating a Health Assessment Template
There are different kinds of assessment templates – from market assessment templates to product assessment templates. Of them all, health assessment templates often get the most use, especially in the healthcare setting. That is why if you are tasked to create a health assessment template for your organization or company, you should make sure that you include and follow key guidelines in formatting the assessment template.
To make your job easier, we have listed all these things you should be mindful of when creating your own health assessment form template. Read on…
1. Include patient privacy clause or wording.
One key rule to remember when designing a health assessment form is that any information provided or shared by the patient is confidential according to the law. The specific implementing rules for your county or state’s privacy laws may differ but, for the most part, patient information is always confidential. Therefore, make sure to include this wording on the health assessment form itself. By doing this, you deter the act of violating the patient’s privacy from anyone in the healthcare team.
2. Add your hospital or company logo design and contact information.
When designing a health assessment form, it is also important to add your organization’s business branding elements. A hospital is still a form of a business enterprise since people have to pay for the medical procedures and treatments that they receive. And a way to promote the image of your organization or business is to make sure that your branding elements like the hospital logo design and name are prominently displayed on the health assessment form and other official hospital forms.
3. Use tick boxes and wide spaces for free-writing.
To promote the easy usage of your health assessment form, you should make sure that most of the questions on the form can be answered by simply ticking boxes, underlining words, encircling illustrations of body parts. By adding these simple things, you can also help any attending physician finish the health assessment quickly and more accurately. You may also see home safety assessment templates.
4. Include portion or space for patient or guardian affirm his or her consent to the process.
In addition to the inclusion of a privacy clause or wording that we have mentioned above, you should also make sure that your health assessment form includes a portion where the patient can indicate if he or she permits the healthcare team to perform the health assessment. This is an integral part of any patient’s bill of rights so hospitals, clinics, and other health service providers should make sure to include this option on their health assessment forms. In the event that the patient is not conscious or is of poor mental capacity, the patient’s legal guardian may sign the assessment form. You may also see business performance assessment.
5. Do not forget to add attending physician or health care team’s names, designation, and signature.
Lastly, another piece of information that should be included in a health assessment template is the attending physician’s (or any healthcare personnel’s) name, designation, signature. Doing this legitimizes the entire assessment process. It also helps ensure that a qualified personnel made the health assessment and came up with a medical diagnosis which the patient will be treated for. You may also see sample assessment templates.
Disease Control Health Assessment Form Template
searo.who.int
Initial Health Assessment Form Template
rbch.nhs.uk
Medicare Adult Health Assessment Form Template
chnact.org.au
Why Use Health Assessment Templates?
The use of standardized of assessment forms is a must for most institutions and organizations that provide health services. If you are a hospital manager or the administrator of any health services provider, you should make it your goal to create a good health assessment template. This way your organization can assure that you will be providing quality health care. Also, remember that a good health assessment form may also act as a risk assessment form since it will save you any future trouble.
To help you feel motivated into creating and designing the best health assessment template and forms, we have collated the top reasons and benefits of using a customized health assessment form. Read them below. You may also see assessment checklist templates.
1. To organize health assessment process
Health assessment can be a very lengthy process as it allows health practitioners to correctly diagnose any person’s illness. There are many steps to it and even the qualified members of the healthcare team will find it confusing and troublesome at times. You may also see risk assessment templates.
With the creation and use one uniform health assessment tool for your organization, you are helping streamline the entire process while making sure that nothing — no sign or symptom is left uninspected. You may also see needs assessment templates.
Organising the health assessment process also makes it possible for other members of the healthcare team to create their own diagnosis and treatment plans for the same patient. To illustrate, some nurses may rely on the assessment performed by the main physician if the patient’s condition cannot tolerate additional prodding. In this scenario, the nurse will base his or her nursing care plan on what the first doctor has found out through his or her assessment.
2. To shorten assessment time
As we have mentioned earlier, health assessment can take a long time to complete if the patient has multiple health complaints and if their physician wishes to thoroughly assess the patient. The process can also get longer if no standard format is followed since the person who is conducting the assessment is free to follow good or get own way of assessing. You may also see sample risk assessment forms.
As a manager or administrator of a health services provider, you would want to make good use of your employees’ time and look at the use of a good health assessment template as an employee productivity tool. To do so, it may be best to rely on a standardized health assessment tool as it can help practitioners follow a shorter route to completing a health assessment while making sure that they still get accurate data points.
3. To standardize qualitative data received
As we have frequently mentioned earlier, health assessment templates allow anyone part of the healthcare team to ask for and input data that are required in the assessment form. When all healthcare personnel does this, it helps standardize all the pieces of information obtained from the patients. In turn, this also helps the health care team create a more personalized treatment plan for each patient by just looking at the patient’s health assessment form.
4. To conform to industry and government standards
Another reason why it makes sense to create and use a standard health assessment template for your hospital or clinic is that it is required by most governments and organizations that overlook the health services sector. If you are already looking to create the most comprehensive and useful health assessment tool for your organization, it makes sense to ensure that this new health assessment template is also compliant to different standards set by the government. You may also see risk assessment form templates.
5. To protect self and institution against medical malpractice lawsuits
Another often-overlooked benefit of using a standard health assessment tool for any health service provider is that they may be used to protect the hospital and its employees from an medical malpractice or negligence lawsuits. A thoroughly filled out health assessment tool can be used as an indication that the attending physician or the healthcare team took care of the patient right from admission and it will also show how a medical diagnosis was created based on this information. You may also see performance assessment templates.
On the other hand, an incomplete or inaccurate health assessment form may raise red flags on how the patient care was delivered. As a hospital administrator, it is in your best interest to promote the use of these health assessment templates and forms and then make sure that the health assessment process is done well and accurately. You may also see technology assessment templates.
So those are the top practical and legal reasons for using a standardized health assessment template tool for your organization or health service. But also remember that well-designed health assessment template will do a thing good to a patient and your small business if your healthcare team are not trained and are not practicing the right methods in assessing a person’s health. As the employee manager, it is your job to get the best talents in the medical field and make sure that they receive continuing education courses to keep their skills intact.
Mental Health Assessment Form Template
bhicares.org
Mental Health Self Assessment Template
vanessabtate.com
Intellectual Disability Health Assessment Template
health.gov.au
Post Deployment Health Assessment Template
brooksidepress.org
Apply What You Have Learned
The different tips and guidelines that we shared in this article are all just tips and guides for anyone who is tasked to create a health assessment form or template for your respective organization. It is up to you on how you internalize all these information and apply them in your template creation process. Use this knowledge well and you will surely come up with a brilliant result. You may also see risk assessment samples.
And if you found this article useful for your organization, do not hesitate to share it with your other colleagues so that they, too, may create comprehensive health assessment templates for their own organizations. You may bookmark the article for future reference or you may also share it with your friends and colleagues through social media or through email.
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