Clinical diagnosis- Made easy for undergraduates

Upon entering the clinical rotation, the first important training section is to learn the taking history and conducting a physical examination. Medical students find difficulty in understanding the various terms used in this connection. This course will make them understand this basic and vital part of their training. The first portion consists of presenting complaints. This is the most important information and leads to diagnosis in most of the cases if appropriately taken. The next section consists of details of presenting complaints. There are different ways of evaluating presenting complaints, depending upon the disease the patient has for example the current complaint may only be the continuation of an already ongoing illness, this may be a new complaint on top of an already ongoing illness or this may be a new illness in an otherwise normal person. The evaluation of various symptoms in detail is very important. This is demonstrated using the example of chest pain and edema which are one of the common complaints in the hospital setting. Other complaints can also be evaluated on similar lines. In the last lecture, the general physical examination is done on a normal subject. Using this video patients can plan the physical examination. The examination of the rest of the systems will be discussed in subsequent courses.