I have been a nurse for less than a year, and I have already sent two patients to the hospital based on findings in my initial head-to-toe assessment. Once you have determined they are breathing and their heart is beating your then check for blood or life threatening injuries. After that you can check for secondary injuries and symptoms. Assessments may be general (head-to-toe or systems) or focused (centering on specific problems or aspects of patients, such as lab values or medication effectiveness). Resources on this page will address these assessment aspects. I work at, we have certain assessments that we need to complete on patients, including a bowel and bladder, pain, range of motion, skin, breathing and circulation. Some of these assessments are rather lengthy. Instead of taking time out of my afternoon to go back into the patient’s room to ask a bunch of additional questions, I can complete the assessment form based off my initial head-to-toe from the morning. I would limit the full head-to-toe to once a week unless they were recently admitted to your facility or had a recent change in condition. When you are performing a head to toe assessment it’s important that you first check the persons airway, and hydration assessments. As a nursing student we are required to do a head to toe assessment with every patient during clinical.
