this is cereth registered nurse re and calm and in this video I want to demonstrate how to assess the eyes now if you would like to watch a complete head-to-toe nursing assessment you can access here in the card or in the YouTube description below a link to the video that will show you how to do that now for this skill what you want to do is you'll want to provide privacy to the patient wash your hands and tell them what you were doing and equipment you will need for this is a pin light so let's get started we're going to inspect the eyes first and we're looking at several things we're looking at the eyelid we're looking at the sclera which is the white of the eyes we're looking at the iris we're looking at the pupil and we're looking at the conjunctiva so you shouldn't see any swelling of the eyelids you should see that the sclera is Y and shiny it shouldn't be yellow like in jaundice and the conjunctiva when you pull down the lower lid have the patient look up it should be nice and pink it shouldn't be red you shouldn't see any drainage or anything like that and look at the eyes how do they set in the eye socket is are they equal for instance is there any strabismus is there a cross eye where one eye turns in more turns out or up or down and these eyes are normal there's no strabismus next you want to look at anisocoria where you have where one pupil would be smaller than the other people are they equal in size normal pupils should be 3 to 5 millimeters in their measurement and here his are about a 3 and they are equal next what we're gonna do is we're going to assess some cranial nerves we're gonna be looking at cranial nerve three which is ocular motor for troq Euler and then 6 which is abducens and we're gonna do several tests to check their function the first one what we're gonna do is we're gonna be looking for any involuntary shaking of the eye called nystagmus and how we're gonna do that was we're gonna take our pin line we're gonna hold it about 12 to 14 inches away from the patient's nose and then what I want you to do is keep your head still don't move your head and just use your eyes to watch where I move the pin line and as you're doing this you're going to do you're going to perform it in the six cardinal fields of gaze and you're just going to move it and you're looking for any involuntary shaking of the eyes so here we go next we're going to see how reactive the pupils are to lie and to do that we're going to dim the lights a little bit and we're gonna have the patients stare off at a distant object that helps dilate those pupils and then we're going to shine using our pin line in at the side and we're gonna see how that pupil response is she constrict and then on the other side it should constrict as well so say their baseline pupil size was like three millimeters it should go down to one milliliter and it should happen on both sides okay so being stare off at that object rod on the wall over there for me okay and that dilates the pupils and we're just going to shine light in at this side okay constrict constrict okay I'm dilate again and then go over to the other side do the same again and they both constricted and equal size next what we're gonna do is we're gonna check for accomodation and how we do that is we turn the lights back on we just previously had them dimmed but we now make it light again we're gonna have him stare off at a distant object that helps dilate the pupils and we're going to take a pin light you can use a pin light finger and you're just going to slowly move it inward to the nose and what you're looking for is that those pupils constrict they accommodate and the eyes cross while looking at the pin line so here we go stare off in the distance please and I don't want you to move your head or anything just keep it real still and just follow this pin light okay ready okay so now we can document because we just checked all of the things with the eyes we can document that the pupils are equal round reactive to lie in the accommodate so that's where that acronym perrla comes into play okay so that wraps up how to assess the eyes and don't forget to check out that video on how to perform a complete head-to-toe nursing assessment thank you so much for watching and don't forget to subscribe to our channel for more videos