| Course | NR 302 Health Assessment I |
|---|---|
| Week | 4 |
| Paper type | Head and neck assessment write-up |
| Length | About 1,410 words, 6 pages |
| Format | APA 7 student paper |
| School | Chamberlain University |
| Program | BSN (pre-licensure) |
| Updated | October 2026 |
Free sample paper for NR 302 Week 4
Head and Neck Write-Up: A 22-Year-Old College Swimmer Examined in the Skills Laboratory
Student Name
College of Nursing, Chamberlain University
NR 302: Health Assessment I
Instructor Name
Month Day, Year
Head and Neck Write-Up: A 22-Year-Old College Swimmer Examined in the Skills Laboratory
Setting, Equipment and Terms
The volunteer, Mr. K., is a 22-year-old college swimmer who trains in an indoor pool about 18 hours a week. He was examined seated on the side of the laboratory table, at 1400, under overhead light. Equipment available: penlight, otoscope with a disposable speculum, tongue blade, gloves, a cotton ball and a ticking wristwatch. No ophthalmoscope was available at this station, so nothing inside the eye beyond the pupil is reported. Mr. K. gave verbal consent and was told he could stop at any point.
Before the examination, the student wrote out the terms for each structure that she could both spell and define from the course text (Jarvis & Eckhardt, 2024). Those terms are used below. Where she could not define a term with confidence, the ordinary English name is used instead, and the same name is kept in every entry.
Head and Face
Head, size and shape: round, in proportion to the body; no lumps or tender areas felt when the scalp was moved over the skull with the fingertips.
Scalp: skin pale pink, without flakes or sores; hair short, light brown, dry and slightly coarse at the ends, which Mr. K. attributes to pool water.
Face at rest: creases beside the nose equal on both sides; corners of the mouth level.
Face in motion: asked to raise both eyebrows, close his eyes tightly, smile, puff out his cheeks and show his teeth; each movement equal on right and left.
Jaw: asked to open and close his mouth with the student's fingertips just in front of each ear; movement smooth on both sides, with no clicking felt or heard.
Sensation of the face: a cotton ball touched to the forehead, cheek and chin on each side; he reported feeling each touch, equal on both sides, with his eyes closed.
Eyes
Eyelids: open fully and close fully; no drooping; lid edges slightly pink with no crusting.
White of the eye (sclera): white on both sides, with fine red vessels at the inner corners of both eyes, more on the right. Mr. K. says his eyes are often red after training.
Lining over the white (conjunctiva): clear on both sides; lower lid lining pink when gently pulled down.
Colored part (iris): blue-gray, round and the same on both sides.
Black center (pupil): 4 millimeters on both sides in room light, estimated against the printed gauge on the penlight; both round and equal.
Pupil response to light: each pupil narrowed to about 2 millimeters when the penlight was brought in from the side; the opposite pupil narrowed at the same time; both widened again when the light was removed.
Eye movement: followed the student's finger through six directions (up and out, out, down and out, and the same on the other side) without jerking; both eyes moved together.
Vision: read the smallest line he could on a pocket card held at 14 inches; he could read the 20/20 line with each eye covered in turn.
Inside the eye: not examined; no ophthalmoscope at this station.
Ears
Outer ear (auricle): skin intact, same size and position on both sides; no pain when the outer ear was gently pulled up and back, on either side.
Ear canal, examined with the otoscope, right: pink walls, a small amount of soft, pale yellow wax at the outer part; no redness, swelling or fluid.
Ear canal, examined with the otoscope, left: pink walls, slightly more wax than the right, soft and pale yellow; no redness or fluid.
Eardrum (tympanic membrane), right: pearly gray, shiny; a cone of reflected light seen at the lower front; the drum did not bulge toward the student or pull away.
Eardrum, left: the lower two-thirds seen, pearly gray and shiny; the upper third blocked from view by wax. The student did not try to remove it.
Hearing: heard a ticking wristwatch at about 6 inches from each ear with the other ear covered.
Mouth and Throat
Lips: pink, slightly dry and cracked at the corners; no sores.
Teeth: 28 present, counted; no visible dark spots or broken edges. Mr. K. had his wisdom teeth removed at 18.
Gums: pink with a firm edge along the upper and lower teeth; a thin red line along the gum above the two front lower teeth that did not bleed when the tongue blade touched it.
Tongue: pink, moist, with a thin white coating at the back; stuck out in the midline; moved side to side equally.
Under the tongue: pink and moist, with visible veins; no sores or lumps.
Roof of the mouth: front part pale pink with firm ridges; back part pink and soft, rising evenly on both sides when he said ah.
Uvula: in the midline and rose straight up with the soft roof.
Back of the throat and tonsils: throat wall pink without spots; tonsils visible just behind the front arch on both sides, pink, without white spots, graded by the student as 1+ using the course chart.
Voice: clear, with no hoarseness.
Neck
Neck at rest: symmetric; muscles on each side equal in size.
Movement: turned his head fully left and right, touched chin to chest and tipped his head back without pain; shoulders shrugged equally against the student's hands.
Windpipe (trachea): felt in the midline above the breastbone, with equal spaces on each side between it and the neck muscles.
Thyroid gland, from behind: asked to sip water and swallow; the gland rose under the fingertips on both sides; smooth, soft and not enlarged to the student's touch; no lumps felt.
Lymph nodes, felt one group at a time with the pads of the fingers, in the order in the course text: in front of the ears, none felt; behind the ears, none felt; at the base of the skull, none felt; under the angle of the jaw, one on the right, about 8 millimeters, soft, moved freely, not tender; under the jaw, none felt; under the chin, none felt; along the front of the neck muscle, none felt; along the back of the neck muscle, none felt; above the collarbone, none felt on either side.
Neck veins: not raised with Mr. K. sitting upright.
Summary of What Was Found
Structures of the head and neck were examined in order and are reported above on both sides. Observations that differed from the rest of the record: fine red vessels in the white of both eyes; dry hair and cracked lip corners; wax blocking the upper third of the left eardrum; a thin red line at the gum edge of the lower front teeth; and one small, soft, movable node under the right jaw. None of these is a conclusion. The student reported the wax, the gum line and the node to the instructor, who reviewed them with her. Mr. K. was told that his dentist may want to look at the gum line at his next cleaning.
What Was Hard
The hardest decision was when to use the textbook word. Before the lab, the student had a list with auricle, sclera, conjunctiva, iris, tympanic membrane, uvula and trachea, and used those because she could spell and define each one. She had read the terms for the individual lymph node groups but mixed up two of them in practice, so she used plain descriptions of location instead, which a reader can follow without a diagram. Bickley et al. (2021) note that a clear description is always more useful than a technical term used wrongly, and in the node section that was the right trade.
The second difficulty was the otoscope. Getting a clear view of the left eardrum took three tries, and the student was tempted to report it as normal once most of it was visible. Writing only what was seen, and naming the wax as the reason the top third was not seen, made the entry honest and gave the next examiner a reason to look again. Ball et al. (2023) describe straightening the canal by pulling the outer ear up and back in adults, and the student found that small adjustments of that pull changed the view more than moving the otoscope did.
References
Ball, J. W., Dains, J. E., Flynn, J. A., Solomon, B. S., & Stewart, R. W. (2023). Seidel's guide to physical examination: An interprofessional approach (10th ed.). Elsevier.
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.
Jarvis, C., & Eckhardt, A. (2024). Physical examination and health assessment (9th ed.). Elsevier.
What the NR 302 Week 4 assignment asks for
The Week 4 assignment asks you to examine the head and neck of a volunteer and document each structure, typically on a form with separate rows for the head, face, eyes, ears, nose, mouth, throat, thyroid and lymph nodes. Expect to describe the technique, the equipment used and the findings on both sides, plus a short reflection. Use anatomical terms you can spell and define, and plain names where you cannot. Give every structure a state, a color or a movement. Record the right and left sides separately. If you lacked an instrument, write that the row was not examined and why. Grade findings such as tonsils only with the chart your course provides.
How this NR 302 Week 4 example is built
The paper opens with Mr. K., his 18 hours a week in pool water, the time and the equipment: penlight, otoscope, tongue blade and pocket vision card, but no ophthalmoscope. The term rule is set once, using Jarvis and Eckhardt (2024). Sections follow for head and face, with six facial movements compared; eyes, with pupil size against the penlight gauge and a row marked not examined; ears, with one eardrum partly hidden by wax; mouth and throat entered part by part; and neck, with nodes checked by group in the order from Bickley et al. (2021). A summary lists the observations that differed. The reflection covers term choices and three tries with the otoscope.
Reading the NR 302 Week 4 grading rubric
Head and neck rubrics generally reward a systematic order, complete coverage of each structure, accurate terminology, bilateral comparison, correct technique and reflection. Completeness carries a large share, so the mouth is entered in separate rows as the form asks instead of one sentence. Terminology is credited when terms are correct for the structure; a wrong anatomical noun costs more than a plain one. Bilateral comparison scores when both sides are written for every paired structure. Technique earns points when the equipment and method for each finding are clear. Writing that a row was not examined, with the reason, protects accuracy. The lymph node order shows that every group was checked.
NR 302 Week 4 help from the desk
The heaviest loss this week is a borrowed term used wrongly, attached to the wrong structure. Next is a collapsed region, one line for the ear when the form had five rows. Structures named with no state, movements asserted rather than described, sides merged when only one was examined and internal findings with no instrument behind them all lose points. Spelling that changes between entries confuses the reader. Descriptions sliding into names for conditions cost marks. Writing eardrum instead of the term is fine if you cannot define it yet. Pass along your section's form and notes, and a head and neck write-up can be organized from them.
Get a NR 302 Week 4 example written to your instructions
Send the Week 4 instructions and the head and neck form your section posted, and a custom example comes back written into its rows inside 24 to 48 hours. The first one is free. Whoever sat still while you looked in their mouth did that for you, and nothing about that arrangement is transferable.
More NR 302 papers and pre-licensure samples
- NR 302 Week 1: Describing a Finding Discussion Post
- NR 302 Week 2: Health History Interview Write-Up
- NR 302 Week 3: Skin Assessment Write-Up
- NR 302 Week 5: Respiratory Assessment
- NR 302 Week 6: Cardiovascular Assessment
- NR 302 Week 7: Abdominal Assessment
- NR 302 Week 8: Head to Toe Write-up
- NR 304 Week 4: Pain Assessment Write-up
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- NR 324 Week 4: Care Plan
- NR 283 Week 4: DVT Pathophysiology Concept Map
NR 302 Week 4 questions, answered
Is it acceptable to write eardrum instead of the medical term?
In a first assessment course, yes, and it is safer than the alternative. Graders in this week are watching for whether you examined a structure and can say what you saw, and a correctly spelled everyday word proves both. A technical noun applied to the wrong part proves neither and takes the entries around it down with it. Pick up the terminology at the pace it is taught.
I have no instrument for the inner ear. What do I put in that row?
Do the outside of the ear properly and enter the internal row as not performed, naming what you did not have. Several sections run this week without any instrument at all and expect exactly that entry. The one thing that cannot appear is a description of a place no equipment let you reach, which is treated as invented data rather than as an honest gap.
How much anatomy vocabulary am I expected to have by week four?
Less than the region contains, which is why the course spreads it over the term. What a grader is really testing is whether the words you do use are used accurately and consistently. A write-up with twenty plain descriptions and six correct technical terms scores above one with twenty-six terms, four of them wrong, and the difference is visible in the first paragraph.
Where can I find a free NR 302 Week 4 sample paper?
The full Week 4 head and neck write-up on Mr. K., with every structure recorded on both sides and the lymph nodes by group, is shown on this page.
What does the NR 302 Week 4 example do when a view is blocked?
The upper third of the left eardrum was hidden by wax, so the write-up records only the lower two-thirds as seen and names the wax as the reason, instead of calling it normal.