This article provides nurses who care for infants with a tool to document both physical examination and nursing assessment. Specific information to gather data and where to organize initial data are described. This tool also accommodates documentation of the first minutes of assessment and treatment provided when delivering care to critically ill infants on admission to the unit. In addition, it provides a means of further documenting nursing assessment information at a later time (e.g., psychosocial needs). The functional health patterns are a framework to organize the nursing assessment of the neonate and his or her family, and this assessment is the data base for both nursing diagnosis and individualized care planning.