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• developing an adequate self-assessment of the patient’s condition, identify-

ing and eliminating the causes of anxiety;

• finding out the patient’s hopes;

• getting additional data that will help you refine the information;

• clarification of the attitude of the patient and his family to the disease.

The end result of the first stage of the nursing process is to document the re-

ceived information. The collected data is recorded in the nursing history or in the

nursing observation sheet.

Nursing medical history

– legal protocol-document

of independent, professional activity of a nurse within the scope of her competence.

The second stage of the nursing process

is to identify the problems of the

patient and his family and formulate a nursing diagnosis.

The second phase is diverse, and has some aims: 1) identifying problems en-

countered by the patient, his family or the community as a kind of reaction to his

condition or disease; 2) establish the factors contributing to or causing the develop-

ment of these problems; 3) identify strong sides of the patient, that would contrib-

ute to the resolution or prevention of problems.

The diagnosis stage is based on the position of psychologist A. Maslow that all

people, sick and healthy, have certain needs (physiological, psychological, social,

spiritual). He believed that people’s behavior is conditioned and motivated by their

own needs for food, water, security, love, etc. (Fig. 1). A. Maslow considered that if

the physiological needs (the foundation of human life) are not met, then the needs

of the highest level – self-respect and self-expression – cannot be met: «a starving

person is more concerned with finding food than realizing their potential at work.»

A healthy person has no difficulty meeting these needs. However, during peri-

ods of illness, childhood, old age, and approaching death, a person may not be able

to satisfy them independently.

Virginia Henderson identified

14 fundamental human needs.

(Table 1). If a person is unable

to meet these needs, problems

arise that require nursing in-

tervention.

The task of nursing

diagnostics

is to establish all

the present and possible future

deviations from a comfortable,

harmonious state, what is most

burdensome for the patient at the

moment, is now the main thing

for him, and try to correct these

deviations within her compe-

Fig. 1.

Hierarchy of human needs by A. Maslow

(1954)