Once the opening preparation stage is behind you, a lab session typically moves to advanced assessment, and the written object that accompanies it is a findings write-up: an exam performed on a manikin, a standardized participant or a lab partner, then documented in language precise enough that a clinician who was not present could picture the body being described. The skill graded on paper is discrimination, which means writing what you found and what you deliberately looked for and did not find. Your section may print this as NR 573 or NR573; it is the same course. Chamberlain publishes no syllabi outside Canvas. The placement here is our teaching judgment from the course's catalog arc; your section's rubric decides what your week actually asks.
What NR-573 Week 2 asks for
Picture the referral note that arrives with an adult sent in from a family practice office: shortness of breath, three days, please evaluate. Everything that makes that patient an acute care problem rather than a clinic problem has to be produced by the assessment you perform and the words you choose to record it in. A lab stage built around advanced assessment is training exactly that conversion, and the written half is where faculty can tell whether you performed a systematic exam or performed a rapid one and wrote a systematic one afterwards.
Advanced assessment writing differs from the charting most nurses already do in two specific ways. The first is that pertinent negatives carry weight. A note recording that breath sounds were diminished at the left base is worth more when it also records that there was no tracheal deviation, no subcutaneous emphysema and symmetric chest expansion, because those absences are the ones that narrowed the field. The second is that findings and interpretation stay in separate sentences. A student who writes that the patient had a pneumothorax has skipped the step that is being graded; a student who records the physical findings and then writes a short interpretive line naming what the pattern is consistent with has done the graduate version of the same job.
The placement-integrity boundary applies here as firmly as anywhere in the course. The examination itself, the faculty observation of it, any recorded demonstration and every attendance or competency record attached to the session are your own work and your own record, and they are never drafted, reconstructed or estimated with outside help. Nor does written support extend to producing findings you did not observe. Where your write-up describes anything encountered outside a manikin lab, all identifying detail is removed before it appears on a page. What a manual supports is the shape of the document: how to order it, how to weight it, and how to write findings that stand up to a reader who was not in the room.
One practical note about lab-based assessment work. Manikins and standardized participants produce a limited menu of abnormal findings, which tempts students to fill the gaps with what they would expect. Do not. Write what the encounter actually produced and, where the scenario constrains the exam, say so in a clause. Faculty who wrote the scenario know exactly what it can and cannot generate, and an invented crackle is the easiest thing in this course to catch.
The NR-573 Week 2 method, step by step
Six moves for turning an assessment session into a document.
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Fix the order of your exam before you touch the patient
Decide your sequence in advance and write in that sequence afterwards. A note that jumps from lungs to abdomen back to neck tells a reader you were reconstructing from memory, and memory is where findings get invented.
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Record findings in observational language
Write what was seen, heard, felt and measured, using the vocabulary of the finding rather than the vocabulary of the diagnosis. Dullness to percussion at the left base is a finding; consolidation is a conclusion that belongs three sentences later.
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Put the pertinent negatives in on purpose
For each abnormality you found, record the two or three related findings you looked for and did not find. Those absences are what turn a note into evidence of a systematic exam rather than a lucky catch.
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Attach measurement to anything measurable
Depth, distance, duration, side, grade, scale. A murmur has a grade and a location. Edema has a level and a depth. An unquantified finding cannot be compared with the next examiner's version of it, and comparability is the whole purpose of the note.
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Write one interpretation paragraph, clearly labelled
After the findings, write a short block that says what the pattern is consistent with and what it argues against. Keeping it separate and visible is how a grader can score your reasoning without having to guess where it started.
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Name what you could not assess and why
Every lab exam has limits: positioning, equipment, the scenario itself, a participant who cannot produce a given finding. Recording the limit is honest and it is graded; leaving it out makes an incomplete exam look like a normal one.
Budget an advanced assessment write-up
The frame our tutors use for a lab assessment document, sized for roughly 800 to 1,000 words. It is our own outline rather than anything the university issues, and your week's scoring guide outranks it wherever they disagree.
| Section | What belongs in it | Word target |
|---|---|---|
| Context and presenting problem | The scenario in two or three sentences, stated as the information you had before you began examining. | 80 to 100 |
| General survey and vitals | Appearance, work of breathing, mental status, position, and the measured values with their timing. | 110 to 140 |
| System findings in fixed order | Each system examined, in your chosen sequence, with observational language and measurements attached. | 280 to 340 |
| Pertinent negatives | The findings you sought and did not find, grouped with the abnormality each one was testing. | 110 to 140 |
| Interpretation | The pattern the findings form, what it supports, what it argues against, and what you would examine next. | 150 to 190 |
| Limitations of the assessment | What the setting, equipment or scenario prevented you from evaluating, stated without apology. | 60 to 90 |
Ground assessment language in published technique
Use the standard descriptive vocabulary and cite where it comes from. Physical examination terminology is codified in advanced assessment texts, and using the published descriptors rather than improvised ones lets a grader match your writing against a known standard. Name the text and edition once in your reference list and stay inside its vocabulary.
Say what a technique is capable of detecting. Where you claim a finding rules something in or out, the strength of that claim belongs to the literature on the maneuver, not to your confidence. Sensitivity and specificity of bedside findings are published for many common examinations, and a sentence acknowledging that a maneuver is suggestive rather than definitive reads as sophistication.
Keep adult findings anchored in adult sources. A clinician trained in pediatric or family practice assessment carries norms for respiratory rate, blood pressure, liver span and heart sounds that do not map onto a critically ill adult. Where you are converting a habit, cite the adult reference explicitly rather than assuming the number travels.
Report every value with its condition. A blood pressure has a position and a cuff. An oxygen saturation has a delivery device and a flow. A pain score has a scale. Values recorded without their conditions are the single most common reason an otherwise good assessment write-up loses points in the documentation row.
Five mistakes that cost points in this week's territory
- Diagnosing inside the findings section. Writing that the patient is septic where a finding belongs collapses two graded steps into one and forfeits the reasoning row.
- Normal as a whole-system verdict. Cardiovascular normal tells a reader nothing about what was examined. Name the components you assessed even when each was unremarkable.
- Findings that could not have been produced. Documenting a subtlety a manikin cannot generate is the fastest way to lose a faculty reader's trust for the rest of the session.
- No pertinent negatives anywhere. A write-up made only of abnormalities looks like a list of hits and gives no evidence that a systematic exam happened.
- Silence about limitations. An exam constrained by position, equipment or scenario reads as an incomplete exam unless you say which constraint applied.
Before you submit
- The document follows the same order as the examination you performed
- No diagnostic language appears above the interpretation block
- Each abnormality is accompanied by the negatives you tested around it
- Every measurable finding carries its measurement and its conditions
- The interpretation names what the pattern argues against as well as for
- Limitations of the lab setting are stated in one clear sentence
Writing up a lab assessment?
Send the scenario brief and the scoring guide out of Canvas, along with your own account of the assessment you performed in lab. A premium original write-up comes back in 24 to 48 hours with findings and interpretation kept apart and the negatives written in on purpose, and revisions run until the grade lands.