- Gestalt View
- As you walk into the room is the patient appear sick or not sick? Distressed? Obtunded? Comatose?
- ABCs
- Does the patient oxygenate and perfuse?
- Vital signs
- What are the specific numbers, how was it assessed, and does it correlate with the picture above?
- Diagnostics
- Find abnormalities. That's really what you are paid for. Some people always have high creatinine or low hemoglobin or whatever, so don't focus on the population mean abnormalities, focus on the patient's abnormalities.
- Medications
- Will tell you a lot about the protoplasmic substrate (except cancer as chemotherapeutic agents generally don't show up on medication reconciliations) and look out for side effects of therapeutic intervention.
