| Course | NSG 121 Health Assessment |
|---|---|
| Unit | Unit 8 |
| Paper type | Assessment competency file |
| Length | About 780 words, 5 pages |
| Format | APA 7 student paper |
| School | Herzing University |
| Program | BSN |
| Updated | October 2026 |
Free sample paper for NSG 121 Unit 8
Assessment Competency File: History, Examination, Descriptions, and Self-Review for One Composite Nail Technician, With Every Pertinent Negative Marked
Student Name
Department of Nursing, Herzing University
NSG 121: Health Assessment
Instructor Name
March 5, 2026
Assessment Competency File: History, Examination, Descriptions, and Self-Review for One Composite Nail Technician, With Every Pertinent Negative Marked
Contents and Conventions
The file holds four parts on the same composite 29-year-old nail technician: Part A, the history; Part B, the examination record in the order performed; Part C, detailed descriptions of the findings that needed site, size, and character; and Part D, a self-review. Pertinent negatives, findings that were looked for and not present, are marked [PN] wherever they appear. Cross-references in square brackets point to the part where a finding is followed up, for example [see C1].
Part A: History
Concern, in her words: rash that goes "red and itchy" and then cracks, recurring over four months. First three digits of the dominant right hand affected first; left index fingertip involved later [see C1]. Stings with alcohol sanitizer. Nearly cleared over ten days off work and came back within days of returning. Intermittent puffy, itchy eyelids [see C2]. Onset around a change of gel polish brand.
Work: eight years in nail care; bare-handed contact with solvents, gels, acrylic monomer, and primer most of the day; gloves seldom worn for detail work.
Medications: store-bought hydrocortisone cream, partial relief; plain hand lotion. Allergies: none known to medicines [PN]. No wheezing or shortness of breath at work [PN]. No hives or swelling of the lips or tongue [PN].
Past and family: childhood eczema at the elbows; brother with childhood eczema.
Psychosocial: worried about losing clients and her livelihood.
Part B: Examination, in Performed Order
General: alert, comfortable, speaking easily; hides her hands when talking. Vital signs as recorded in the equipment record: temperature 36.7 °C, pulse 72 and regular, respirations 14, blood pressure 114/74 on the second reading, saturation 98% on room air.
Hands examined first because of the concern: redness, thickening, scaling, and cracks at the fingertips described in C1. Backs of the hands and wrists clear [PN]. No blisters [PN]. No pus or red streaks up the arm [PN].
Nails: no artificial nails; plates intact, no pitting [PN]; mild redness of the right index nail fold [see C1].
Face: eyelid changes described in C2. Conjunctivae not red [PN].
Head, ears, nose, mouth, throat: no abnormal findings; mouth and lips without swelling [PN].
Neck and nodes: no palpable nodes in the neck or above the elbows [PN].
Chest and lungs: clear breath sounds throughout; no wheeze [PN, relevant to the work-exposure history in A].
Heart and abdomen: no abnormal findings.
Extremities: full range of motion of fingers and wrists; light touch intact at all fingertips, including the affected pads [PN]; capillary refill brisk.
Part C: Descriptions
C1, hands. Right hand: redness covering the pads of the first three digits, reaching 1.5 cm back from each tip toward the first finger joint. Skin over these areas thickened with fine white scale. Three straight cracks on the pad of the index finger, 3, 4, and 5 mm long, shallow, with a dry base and no bleeding. Left hand: a smaller red, scaling patch, 8 mm across, on the index fingertip pad. Right index nail fold: faint redness along 5 mm of the fold, no swelling, not warm, not tender [PN].
C2, eyelids. Both upper lids mildly puffy, left slightly more than right, with fine scaling of the lid skin across the lateral two thirds. No crusting at the lash line [PN]. Lower lids clear.
Part D: Self-Review
Difficult: measuring small lesions on curved fingertips. A flat ruler did not sit well on a fingertip, and the extent of the redness was first estimated before being measured again with a flexible paper tape; the estimate had been 1 cm, the measurement 1.5 cm. I now measure before writing a number.
Also difficult: keeping cause out of the descriptions. In a first draft of C1 I wrote "contact dermatitis pattern"; that is a conclusion, not a description, and was removed. The history suggesting a work-related allergy was reported to the clinic nurse separately, and the diagnosis belongs to the clinician (Gonçalo et al., 2018).
Incomplete: I did not ask whether she has had patch testing before, which matters for the clinician's next step, and I did not ask about exposures at home, such as cleaning products or hair dye, that could contribute. Both are listed for the next visit.
Done well: every region in Part B has either a finding or a marked negative, and each finding in the history can be followed to where the examination addressed it.
Sources
Expected findings and examination sequence follow the course text (Jarvis, 2020), with descriptive terms for skin checked against Bickley et al. (2021). The workplace allergy context comes from Gonçalo et al. (2018). The patient is a composite created for coursework.
References
Bickley, L. S., Szilagyi, P. G., Hoffman, R. M., & Soriano, R. P. (2021). Bates' guide to physical examination and history taking (13th ed.). Wolters Kluwer.
Gonçalo, M., Pinho, A., Agner, T., Andersen, K. E., Bruze, M., Diepgen, T., Foti, C., Giménez-Arnau, A., Goossens, A., Johansen, J. D., Paulsen, E., Svedman, C., Wilkinson, M., & Aalto-Korte, K. (2018). Allergic contact dermatitis caused by nail acrylates in Europe: An EECDRG study. Contact Dermatitis, 78(4), 254-260. https://doi.org/10.1111/cod.12942
Jarvis, C. (2020). Physical examination & health assessment (8th ed.). Elsevier.
What the NSG 121 Unit 8 instructions ask for
Unit 8 gathers the course's skills into one competency file for one person. Expect to include the history, the examination in performed order, precise descriptions of findings and a self-review. Common questions are whether earlier units can be reused, what belongs in the self-review and whether anything from outside the course belongs. Check whether your section expects the same person throughout. Reuse is fine if updated and consistent. The self-review should name specific difficulties and what you would do differently. Every description should meet the documentation standard from earlier units. The file shows that interviewing, measuring, examining and documenting work together for one person.
Inside the NSG 121 Unit 8 example
The file opens with contents and conventions, naming the four parts and the vocabulary source. Part A gives the history under standard headings with the concern in her words. Part B records the examination in the order performed, with normals written out. Part C describes findings precisely, with location, size and character. Part D is an honest self-review, naming two difficulties and the fixes tried. The sources section names the texts. The file reads as one coherent record rather than four assignments stapled together, and the person's occupation links the history to the findings throughout. Precise documentation in Part C meets the standard set in Unit 6. Her occupation runs through every part, from the history's exposure questions to the fingertip descriptions.
NSG 121 Unit 8 rubric: what full points look like
Herzing's rubric for the competency file usually covers completeness of the four parts, consistency across parts, quality of history and examination, precision of descriptions, depth of self-review and sources. Agreement across parts matters most, since the history, findings and descriptions must refer to the same person and match. Completeness points reward all four parts. Description criteria look for the documentation standard from earlier units. Self-review earns credit for specific difficulties and fixes. Sources should support vocabulary. Clear part headings help the grader. Normals written out in Part B are expected. Jarvis's text and the occupational dermatitis guideline remain the core sources for this file. A self-review that proposes a better tool, such as a flexible ruler for curved fingertips, is often credited.
NSG 121 Unit 8 help before you submit
Competency files in Unit 8 often slip by pasting earlier assignments without making them agree. Another frequent problem is a self-review that praises the work without naming difficulties. Students often drop the precise documentation standard in Part C. The examination order is not recorded. The history omits occupational exposure, which is the thread linking her history to her hands. Sources are missing. Measurements in Part B do not match those in Part C. The person's own words drop out of the history. Finally, make the parts consistent, because graders reward a file that reads as one assessment of one person, where the history explains the findings and the descriptions match the examination.
Get a NSG 121 Unit 8 example written to your instructions
Send the Unit 8 instructions and the rubric from your NSG 121 classroom, together with any earlier unit work the file should build on. We write a custom example whose parts refer to one another, records the examination in performed order, threads pertinent negatives throughout and ends with a self-review that names the gaps. First custom sample free, back in 24 to 48 hours.
More NSG 121 papers and BSN samples
- NSG 121 Unit 1: Assessment technique sequence
- NSG 121 Unit 2: Equipment use record
- NSG 121 Unit 3: Expected versus unexpected findings chart
- NSG 121 Unit 4: Landmark and positioning guide
- NSG 121 Unit 5: Head to toe rehearsal log
- NSG 121 Unit 6: Documentation practice set
- NSG 121 Unit 7: Developmental variation notes
- NSG 223 Unit 8: Conflicting priority resolution
- NSG 233 Unit 8: Unstable patient timeline
- NSG 298 Unit 8: Error pattern portfolio
- NSG 421 Unit 8: Bedside technology evidence file
NSG 121 Unit 8 questions, answered
Can I reuse work from earlier units in the file?
Most sections allow it, and a competency file is meant to accumulate. Rewrite rather than paste, since an earlier description usually needs correcting against what you have learned, and confirm what your course permits for previously submitted material. Where you have corrected something, saying so in the self-review tends to read better than a silent replacement.
What belongs in the self-review?
What you found difficult, what you would examine differently, and what the file does not cover. Sections generally credit an accurate account of gaps more than a confident one that claims none. Keep it about the assessment work itself rather than about how much you have grown, since the second reads as filler and the first is what the criteria describe.
Does the file include anything from my clinical placement?
No. Hours, check-offs and anything performed on a real patient are yours to complete and are documented through your program, never written by anybody else. The file here is built on a composite patient and says so. A sample can show you how a finished file is organized and where its parts have to agree, and nothing more than that.
Where can I find a free NSG 121 Unit 8 sample paper?
This page holds the whole NSG 121 Unit 8 competency file free, history, examination, descriptions and self-review for one person. A file built on your own earlier units can be prepared on request.
What goes in a nursing assessment competency file?
A health history, the examination in performed order, precise descriptions of findings and an honest self-review. This sample assembles all four for a nail technician with occupational hand dermatitis.