Medical Director Los Angeles County Fire Department Rolling Hills Estates, California
Description: Between OPQRST, SAMPLE, ABCDE, we can often fail to see the forest for the trees. EMS is difficult. We are cramming a lot of information and training into a very short amount of training time, and we are expecting more and more of our personnel. However, choreographing so much of the history taking, which is the most valuable part of diagnostics, can lead to failure to consider bigger picture items. In this presentation, Dr. Kazan will use examples from real patient encounters in which all of the necessary information was present, but poor decisions were made because of a failure to consider the bigger context in which things were occurring. Dr. Kazan will discuss how spending a little more time and asking a few more questions can save time and lead to better decisions and patient outcomes.
Learning Objectives:
Upon completion, participants will be able to describe the current, mnemonic-based approach to history taking
Upon completion, participants will understand the value of asking more questions to better understand the context of the patient's chief complaint.
Upon completion, participants will be able to describe real-world examples of how a mnemonic-based history can fail to identify critical complaints.
