As early as the nightingale period, people have realized the importance of evaluation in nursing practice. Florence Nightingale emphasized the importance of nursing observation, because nurses spend more time at patients' bedside than doctors. She believes that nurses need to have the skills to collect information, such as the ability to observe and record vital signs. At the same time, she also stressed that it is very important to get information about patients' health and diseases by talking with them. In addition, she believes that the environment is an important factor affecting the health status of patients, so attention should be paid to evaluating the possible impact of patients' living environment on their health. She also mentioned in the book that evaluation is not only about collecting data, but more importantly, it can analyze and explain the collected data.
Due to the differences in medical systems and social and cultural backgrounds in different countries and regions, the requirements for nurses' roles in clinical practice are also different. In China, due to historical reasons, for a long time, nurses were only doctors' assistants, in a subordinate position, lacking their own independent knowledge system, and "injection, medicine distribution and temperature measurement" became synonymous with nurses' work. With the improvement of people's living standards and the continuous development of medical science and technology, people's health needs are constantly changing. In the process of clinical practice, the important role of nursing work has been continuously highlighted, and higher nursing education has been restored. After more than 30 years of continuous efforts, a large number of higher nursing talents have been trained and transported for clinical practice, which has made a qualitative leap in the quality of clinical nursing in China and is gradually becoming one of the international advanced ranks. With the deepening of holistic nursing concept and practice, higher requirements are put forward for nurses' health assessment ability. As one of the core competencies that modern nurses must possess, health assessment is an indisputable fact, and people pay more and more attention to it. The American Nurses Association and the Australian Nursing Association stated in 1980 and 1983 that nurses must have the overall nursing assessment ability. 1993 the international association of nurses also believes that nurses' skills in nursing evaluation are one of the standards of high-quality nursing. Nurses began to realize the importance of overall evaluation, comprehensive evaluation and timely evaluation according to the changes of illness, which made the evaluation content go beyond the traditional scope of "only evaluating vital signs and fluid intake" and attached great importance to the recording and application of evaluation results. As an important part of nursing practice, evaluation is not only a doctor's job responsibility.
In clinical nursing practice, if nurses can't accurately collect health-related data and lack the ability to synthesize, analyze, explain and diagnose health data, they can't confirm the nursing problems/nursing diagnosis of nursing objects before making nursing plans, and their nursing intervention behavior will lose its scientific basis. Therefore, systematically learning the basic theory, knowledge and skills of health assessment is an important content of nursing practice. Nurses should confirm the physical and mental health problems of nursing objects through evaluation in nursing practice.