Our goal in creating Symptom to Diagnosis was to develop an interesting, practical, and informative approach to teaching the diagnostic process in internal medicine. Interesting, because real patient cases are integrated within each chapter, complementing what can otherwise be dry and soporific. Informative, because Symptom to Diagnosis articulates the most difficult process in becoming a physician: making an accurate diagnosis. Many other textbooks describe diseases, but fail to characterize the process that leads from patient presentation to diagnosis. Although students can, and often do, learn this process through intuition and experience without direct instruction, we believe that diagnostic reasoning is a difficult task that can be deciphered and made easier for students. Furthermore, in many books the description of the disease is oversimplified, and the available evidence on the predictive value of symptoms, signs, and diagnostic test results is not included. Teaching based on the classic presentation often fails to help less experienced physicians recognize the common, but atypical presentation. This oversight, combined with a lack of knowledge of test characteristics, often leads to prematurely dismissing diagnoses.
0 comments:
Post a Comment