Nutrition Focused Physical Assessment: Making Clinical Connections

Course overview

New guidelines for diagnosing malnutrition were released in 2011. This course will teach you what you need to know to advance your level of practice by incorporating nutrition focused physical assessment (NFPA) techniques to support your nutrition diagnoses and to provide objective markers to measure health outcomes. The course includes a reference book with over 200 photos and illustrations; the updated (2011) characteristics of malnutrition and case studies to apply what you learned. Topics include: the relationship between nutritional status indicators and changes in overall health; basic components of NFPA; criteria for assessing malnutrition using NFPA (overall appearance, vital signs, skin, hair, nails, hydration, digestive system, bone health); and how to identify potential nutrient deficiencies, water dysregulation and signs of wound healing using NFPA.