Introduction
Whenever there is a disease or ailment, there are two sides to what is happening with a patient. One side is about what they are experiencing due to the illness, whereas the other is about what is happening within the body. Although the latter is a prime concern of a health professional, it is also critical not to overlook the patient’s perspective, which is why the Theory of Unpleasant Symptoms (TOUS) is a valuable assessment tool. Within the given framework, one should look for experienced symptoms, influencing factors, and the outcomes of these experiences.
Symptoms
The first and arguably the most crucial place to look for symptoms in an assessment process is the symptoms experienced by a patient. Here, it is vital to distinguish the experience from the quality of life. TOUS is usually “underaddressed across completed studies that instead focus on patient-reported quality of life rather than on perceived behavioral or performance indicators concurrent with the subjective symptom reports” (Silva-Rodrigues et al., 2019, p. 436). In other words, an assessment should not evaluate what the patient reports to be their quality of life; instead, the emphasis should be put on the experiences themselves. For example, if there is pain, the goal is not solely to understand how it makes a patient’s life harder but to analyze the pain level, locality, and how it manifests.
Influences
Influencing factors are the second place to look for when conducting a patient assessment, according to TOUS. It is stated that “the theory of unpleasant symptoms was composed of three major preceding factors (physical, psychological, and situational factors), unpleasant symptoms, and performance” (Yang & Kang, 2018, p. 12). As a result, the goal is to analyze the influences that are creating, worsening, or contributing to the symptoms. If it is a situational factor, a clear situation must be outlined and identified; however, if it is a physical element, it must be categorized. The latter might be difficult for health professionals since symptom science is mostly an underdeveloped field of knowledge and has received little attention from the medical and academic community (Blakeman, 2019). Therefore, it is possible to confuse between what are the influencing factors and what are the direct symptoms caused by the latter. However, as long as the symptomatic profile of a patient is created thoroughly, slight technical mismatches should not cause a significant issue.
Consequences
The third and last place to look for during a patient assessment is the consequences of the symptoms. TOUS states that symptoms emerge or occur together because they are visible or experiential parts of one underlying problem (Schreier et al., 2019). The latter means that symptom relief should also be systematic, holistic, and comprehensive; therefore, they should disappear or become less problematic in unison. Whenever a patient is assessed through TOUS, they aim to understand how these symptoms affect them. The critical question is whether these consequences exacerbate the condition through a positive feedback loop.
Conclusion
In conclusion, encountered symptoms, contributing factors, and the results of these experiences are vital places to look for when conducting a TOUS patient assessment. TOUS is a systematic framework that should be used more in most cases, partly due to the undeveloped nature of symptom science. As a result, a health professional should focus on the sole purpose of TOUS, which is to gather and create a symptom profile of a patient with as much detail and precision as possible.
References
Blakeman, J. R. (2019). An integrative review of the theory of unpleasant symptoms. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 75(5), 946-961. Web.
Schreier, A. M., Johnson, L. A., Vohra, N. A., Muzaffar, M., & Kyle, B. (2019). Post-treatment symptoms of pain, anxiety, sleep disturbance, and fatigue in breast cancer survivors. Pain Management Nursing, 20(2), 146-151. Web.
Silva-Rodrigues, F. M., Hinds, P. S., & Nascimento, L. C. (2019). The theory of unpleasant symptoms in pediatric oncology nursing: A conceptual and empirical fit? Journal of Pediatric Oncology Nursing, 36(6), 436-447. Web.
Yang, I. S., & Kang, Y. (2018). Self-care model based on the theory of unpleasant symptoms in patients with heart failure. Applied Nursing Research, 43, 10-17. Web.