Table example
| - | Areas | Subjective Data | Objective Data |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pros | Understanding | Insight into the patient’s feelings, background, attitudes, and perspective provides nurses with helpful context. | Observations are informed by clinical knowledge and expertise. |
| Care plans | Knowledge of the patient's preferences and priorities strengthens patient-centered care, enabling clinicians to tailor care plans to individual patient needs. | Objective nursing data informs an evidence-based diagnosis and care plan based on measurable facts. Such data can offer a baseline to measure and monitor improvement or advances made through treatment. | |
| Advocacy | Nurses can use subjective data to get to know their patients and learn about their needs, values, and beliefs. Clinicians defend patient autonomy, respecting cultural, religious, and personal convictions. | By monitoring objective data, nurses detect changes in the patient’s condition and can advocate for necessary nursing or other interventions based on objective evidence, ensuring patient safety and quality care. | |
| Communication and trust | Gathering subjective data helps establish communication and trust in the nurse-patient relationship, which favors patient compliance and outcomes. | Among healthcare team members, objective data provides a common language, accuracy, and information for evidence-based decisions, efficient hand-offs, and nurse charting. | |
| Cons | Cultural and ethical considerations | Subjective data may be less reliable in some cases due to perceptions or memories influenced by emotional or cultural factors. | Cultural and ethical considerations can leave questions in the minds of practitioners and patients, especially when subjective and objective data do not agree. Nurses must be careful not to dismiss subjective information and to document each type of data carefully, seeking clarification for any questions. |
| Language barriers and cultural or social biases may limit the information provided. | Objective data often needs the context of diverse concepts of right and wrong. | ||
| Emotional interference | Fear or anxiety may lead the patient to deny some symptoms. | Fear and anxiety can impact vital signs, although the nurse may be able to detect strong emotions and find a way to calm the patient. |
