How to perform a urinalysis
Intended for healthcare professionals
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How to perform a urinalysis

Alison Bardsley Senior lecturer in primary care nursing, course director, non-medical prescribing, Faculty of Health and Life Sciences, Coventry University, Coventry, England

Rationale and key points

This article aims to help nurses to undertake a urinalysis in a safe, timely, effective and patient-centred manner, ensuring privacy and dignity. Urinalysis is a common clinical procedure involving examination of urine to detect problems in the body.

Urinalysis should be carried out by competent healthcare practitioners.

Urinalysis is a simple, cost-effective tool which can be performed for screening, diagnosis and management of conditions, because urine might undergo several changes as an individual becomes unwell.

Urinalysis is an essential component of the holistic and symptomatic assessment of any individual in poor health.

The healthcare practitioner should explain the procedure to patients.

The healthcare practitioner should document relevant findings.

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Nursing Standard. 30, 2, 34-36. doi: 10.7748/ns.30.2.34.e10001

Correspondence

aa8538@coventry.ac.uk

Peer review

All articles are subject to external double-blind peer review and checked for plagiarism using automated software.

Received: 19 February 2015

Accepted: 28 May 2015

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