Patient presents to the emergency room complaining of chest pains and shortness of breath.
The patient also explains the feeling of dizziness among other complaints.
All of this information is gathered and reported to the on call doctor.
How does this doctor go about using this information to get to the correct diagnosis of the patient?
If you are reading this right now and you have watched our educational videos or read our educational articles you know why a differential diagnosis in this type of situation is very important.
A differential diagnosis works by the doctor reviewing the patient’s chart, listening to the patient’s complaints and getting a history form the patient.
All of this is very important because the doctor is using this information to create a list of possible diagnoses based of the patient’s information.
The possible corresponding diagnoses are ranked in order from serious to less serious.
Tests are then done to either confirm or rule out a possible diagnosis.
When doctors do not follow this method and just essentially “guess” as to a patient’s diagnosis the doctor is needlessly endangering his or her patient.
The sad thing is that in some instances some doctors do not think that a differential is needed.
Some say that it is just something they learned in medical school and does not have to always be applied in the “real world.”
If you had chest pains and your heart attack was misdiagnosed this is what we invite you to do if your matter happened in Maryland.
Pick up the phone and give us a call.
We can be reached at 301-850-4832. We answer questions like yours all the time and we would be glad to listen to your story.
