Enhancing diagnostic reasoning skills in nurse practitioner students: a teaching tool.

The Advanced Health Assessment course provides an opportunity to focus on critical thinking and diagnostic reasoning skills as students transition to the nurse practitioner role. The authors describe a structured teaching tool designed for faculty to use in facilitating diagnostic reasoning and clinical judgment. This tool gives faculty a format to use in the classroom or online for helping students decide which data to collect and which data are important in developing hypothesis driven differential diagnoses.

Optimizing mental health in an academic nurse-managed clinic.

PURPOSE: To evaluate the initial results of tracking the health outcomes, specifically mental health outcomes, for clients at an academic nursing clinic and to describe an approach to mental health treatment in this setting. DATA SOURCES: Descriptive-survey design with convenience sampling of patients from a nurse-managed clinic (N = 151). As part of the routine documentation for clinic clients, the Medical Outcomes Study Short-Form 36-Item Health Survey (SF-36) was selected to monitor client health outcomes. CONCLUSIONS: This health status evaluation indicated that the mental health scores for clinic clients were lower than national normed data. This result could reflect unmet mental health needs in clinic clients. Mental health reasons for the visit were reported in only 3% of the sample. Most clients in this sample sought treatment in the clinic for physical health screening and episodic health problems. IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE: Integration of mental health interventions in primary care settings may help providers to optimize the management of clients' overall health status.