Expectations Length: A minimum of 180 words, not including references Citations:

Expectations
Length: A minimum of 180 words, not including references
Citations: At least one high-level scholarly reference in APA from within the last 5 years
Differential diagnosis is a process that helps to deduce from patient symptoms the root causation for proper treatment. In doing this it can help to analyze and diagnose particular diseases from other similar clinical disease presentations. This process is started by obtaining a detailed medical history as well as integrating how the patient presents in clinic and the provider assessment. Symptoms of disease may present similarly but using differential diagnosis process helps the provider to deliver the most educated information and diagnosis for the patient. This is important to ensure proper treatment and procedure is followed. The patient’s information like their gender, age, medical history, and family medical history are taken into account. Further information may be requested such as imaging, radiology, laboratory tests, and diagnostic tests may help to obtain further information to narrow down the diagnosis. There are risks involved such as unnecessary testing and financial burden, misdiagnosis, as well as delayed diagnosis due to delayed data from testing. Benefits from this are early diagnosis which can lead to preventative care and treatment to help stop disease progression early. This can decrease overall medical costs as well as improved patient outcomes. Differential diagnosis is very important for the provider to be utilizing properly to provide the best quality of care to guide future clinical decisions such as medication prescriptions, treatments provided, as well as educational information provided to the patient. An example of this could be a patient presenting with chest pain. It’s important to see if the pain is radiating to the right shoulder indicating a heart attack, chest pain could be a result from a panic attack, pulmonary issues, another indication could be heartburn. All present with “chest pain” but treatments drastically differ. In some cases it is difficult to differentiate by imaging alone, all history and findings should be considered to make the final diagnosis. Testing is a great value in early screening, differential diagnosis, and disease severity assessment (Dai et al., 2020). Using proper differential diagnosis will help to guide our care to result in the best result and interest of the patient. Delivering patient focused care is incredibly important and needs to be the focal point of our future care.
Reference
Dai, W. C., Zhang, H. W., Yu, J., Xu, H. J., Chen, H., Luo, S. P., … & Lin, F. (2020). CT imaging and differential diagnosis of COVID-19. Canadian Association of Radiologists Journal, 71(2), 195-200.