Overview
NURS 518 Advanced Health Assessment for Nurse Practitioners is part of the Master of Nursing: Nurse Practitioner (MN–NP) degree and the Post-Master’s Diploma Nurse Practitioner (PMD–NP) program.
In NURS 518, you will review the principles of history taking, physical examination, and diagnostic reasoning. You will apply epidemiologic and clinical decision-making principles, communication skills, and informed consent in clinical assessment. You will also examine concepts of privacy and confidentiality related to documentation, including electronic medical records and virtual care.
Outline
NURS 518 is a paced course delivered over 13 weeks using a blended learning approach that combines asynchronous online learning, regular synchronous virtual sessions, and a mandatory in-person physical assessment lab component. The lab provides intensive, supervised practice in advanced health assessment skills within a small-group setting.
Course content emphasizes the development of advanced health assessment competencies required for nurse practitioner practice. Emphasis is placed on the following:
- Clinical decision-making and diagnostic reasoning
- Comprehensive health history taking and documentation
- Principles and techniques of advanced adult physical examination across body systems
- Therapeutic communication and professional standards for nurse practitioner practice
- Integration of assessment findings to support clinical judgment and care planning
Learning outcomes
After completing this course, you will be able to:
- Elicit and clarify the reasons for the client encounter to determine the nature and scope of services required by the client;
- Establish a shared understanding of the client’s culture, lived experiences, gender identity, sexuality, strengths, and limitations to inform person-centered assessment;
- Apply clinical and diagnostic reasoning to collect, organize, interpret, and document comprehensive and focused health assessment data, including in a virtual care setting;
- Conduct a review of systems and focused and comprehensive assessments using valid and reliable tools;
- Integrate epidemiologic principles and clinical reasoning to synthesize health assessment data to formulate and document differential diagnoses;
- Use client-centered and relational interviewing and communication skills to co-create assessment goals, support shared decision-making, and provide education, coaching, and counselling;
- Apply legislation, professional standards and ethical principles related to informed consent, privacy, documentation, and health information management;
- Manage personal and health information in accordance with legislation and professional standards.
Evaluation
Assessment in NURS 518 consists of multiple course activities with assigned percentage weightings. Your final grade is based on overall performance across all required assessments. A variety of assessment approaches are used to evaluate achievement of the course learning outcomes.
| Activity | Weight |
| Participation activities | 10% |
| Assessments | 40% |
| Exams | 50% |
| Physical assessment lab – In-person | Pass/Fail |
| Total | 100% |
Materials
Digital course materials
Links to the following course materials will be made available in the course:
Goolsby, M. J., & Grubbs, L. (2022). Advanced assessment: Interpreting findings and formulating differential diagnosesundefined (5th ed.). F. A. Davis. ISBN 978-1-71964-831-8.
Recommended resources
Bickley, L. S, Szilagyi, P. G., Hoffman, R. M., Rainier, P., & Soriano, R. P. (2026). Bates' guide to physical examination and history-taking (14th ed.). Wolters Kluwer.
Campbell, S., Hui J., Kherani, I. Z., Li, W. W., Lytvyn, Y., & Osei-Yeboah, C. (Eds.). (2021). Essentials of clinical examination handbook (9th ed.). Thieme.
(Recommended texts; not provided within the course)