Esther Park Abdominal Pain Assessment Reflection Paper Explicitly describe the task you undertook to complete the exam for Esther Park 

To complete this exam, I interviewed Ms. Park to establish the history of her presenting illness and discovered that the abdominal discomfort had began almost a week ago and worsened over the last 3 days. Having established that she had no history of GI disorders, I conducted a physical exam on my patient. General physical assessment showed she was stable, though mildly distressed. Cardiovascular, respiratory and HEENT exams all revealed no abnormal finding. A physical exam of her abdomen revealed no discoloration, bruits or friction sounds over the liver and spleen. However, an oblong mass with mild guarding and distension appeared on the left lower quadrant of the abdomen. The exam further revealed no CVA tenderness and no organomegaly.

Explain the clinical reasoning behind your decisions and tasks

            With the patient reporting pain in the abdomen, the first action was to examine her bowel sounds in all quadrants to establish the exact pain location. The patient’s bowel sounds were normoactive in all quadrants, with no registered bruits or friction sounds. On percussing the left lower quadrant, a scattered dullness was noted, which is often suggestive of feces in the colon (Setya, Mathew & Cagir, 2020). Further, palpating the abdomen showed that it was soft with mild guarding, and an oblong mass was present, confirming the presence of feces in the colon. To rule out any doubt, I conducted a digital rectal exam, which showed fecal mass in the rectal vault, hence my positive diagnosis of fecal impaction.

Identify and discuss at least 3 things that you learned from completing this assessment and how you can apply to your practice.

Completing this abdominal assessment enabled me to learn pertinent information regarding patient pain assessment. Firstly, prior to this assessment, I had hardly any knowledge on how to conduct abdominal palpations especially when a patient is in pain. Secondly, prior to this assessment, I had difficulty interpreting patient’s facial responses to mild pain during palpations. Finally, this assessment enabled me to learn the basics of abdominal pain assessments that I intend to leverage when assessing patients during my practice.