Reviving Traditional Bedside Manners for Improved Diagnosis

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Technology causes a delay in diagnosis due to the lack of physical examinations done by the patient’s physicians, therefore returning to the traditional bedside manner will be beneficial to the patient. Abraham Verghese, Blake Charlton, Jerome P. Kassirer, Mehgan Ramsey, and John P.A. Ioannidis were the authors of the research study titled “Inadequacies of Physical Examination as a Cause of Medical Errors and Adverse Events: A Collection of Vignettes.” In this study, Verghese et al discussed how physical examination in patients has been lacking in many hospitals. Therefore, this study was conducted for physicians to describe their failures of patient intervention, especially in physical examination and its consequences. According to the study, …show more content…

Through this article, it was evident that physical examination should be a primary care for the patients. This article states, “Although the majority of the errors were corrected within 5 days, even a delay of 1 hour might affect patient outcomes” (Verghese et al 1324). Through this quote, it is evident that physicians must not underestimate the importance of performing physical examination in patients. Physical examination is part of the traditional bedside diagnosis because it is a tool that allows them to conclude what diseases the patient has. In the introduction of this study, Verghese et al presented the statistic of how physicians today spend less time with their patients, and more time on the computer. The article …show more content…

Lo and Lindsay Parham’s article discussed about how some physicians feel challenged when the patients bring in the health information from the Internet to their office. This article states, “The physician’s perception that the patient was challenging her authority was the strongest predicator of perceived deterioration in the doctor-patient relationship” (Lo and Parham 21). Based on this quote, the reason why physicians might feel challenged is because they are taken aback by the confidence of the patient due to the patients already researching their own disease or symptoms online. The physicians do not know what illnesses that the patient might have without interacting with the patient physically first, therefore, making the physicians feel challenged by the patient whom have researched it previous to the meeting. By bringing information from the internet, some patients might feel that that they know everything about their health, and thus, they want an immediate intervention. In the article, “The Impact of Health Information on the Internet on Health Care and the Physician-Patient Relationship: National U.S. Survey among 1.050 U.S. Physicians” by Elizabeth Hurray from the Department of Primary Care and Population Sciences, Murray et al discussed how some patients request immediate intervention, when they do not need any

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