Start with pathophysiology when studying any med-surg disorder. Once you understand what's happening in the body, the signs, symptoms, and nursing care follow logically. With peripheral vascular disease, reduced blood flow explains the pain, weak pulses, skin changes, and numbness.
Here's a key tip for studying med surg in nursing school, anytime you are studying a med surg disorder, say peripheral vascular disease or anything that you are studying for med surg, the key to focus on is the pathophysiology. You have to understand what is happening in the body in order to understand that everything else you have to know about the disorder like the signs and symptoms, the nursing assessment and the nursing interventions. So for here as an example, with peripheral vascular disease, if the blood is not getting to where it needs to go, which is what's happening here, the signs and symptoms are all going to relate to that lack of blood flow to whatever area is affected. So if it's to the extremities, then the patient could have pain and decreased peripheral pulses, color changes in their skin, paresthesia, things like that because simply their extremities are not getting the blood flow that they require to function. And so anytime you're studying med surg, make sure you understand the patho first.
