Physical Examination

Owned by Dr Pallavi Jane Pereira (Unlicensed)
Last updated: May 29, 2019
3 min read

After taking a history, the app prompts the CHW to review their Universal Safety Precautions needs. Universal safety precautions are medical procedures which needs the healthcare worker to avoid contact with patient’s bodily fluids or not transfer own or any infection as a result of clinical case evaluation, to the patient. These include such as washing of hands, wearing of protective clothing, decontamination of equipment and devices, proper, swift and clinically correct disposal of biomedical waste. Then the CHW, being trained in systemic examination, identifies the location and the functioning to a particular part or organ involved and proceeds to a detailed physical examination as prompted by the app.

 

A physical examination or a checkup is the process of examining the patient’s for any possible signs or symptoms of a medical condition. It is divided into 2 categories, general physical examination and specific physical examination (specific to a particular system and/organ). It is often a highly specific and requires varying levels of skill set which requires years of experience and training, something that a health worker cannot do by him/herself. Thus with inputs from the app, the health worker manages to do a series of simple examination procedures which they have received training for. For each set of common medical conditions there are a fixed and dynamic set of physical examinations prompts available.

There are 140+ different variations of the physical examination protocols built into the app.

The physical examination, along with the history taking becomes a part of the Electronic Health record (EHR) which is submitted in a concise but detailed fashion to the doctor for his evaluation and management of the case.

 

Screening - Physical Examinations are part of medical screening or general health checkups.

After determining if the prevalence of a particular disease (eg. hypertension) is high in the community, targeted interventions are held in form of Health camps or screening centers are setup. The aim is to screen individuals to know their status, risk factors and educate them and the community about a particular risk factor or a disease.

Screening may involve one or more of the following tasks:

  • history taking

  • physical examination

  • blood tests

  • imaging tests and

  • referral mechanisms

Commonly held screening procedures include:

  • For Hypertension : Blood pressure BP measurement camp

  • Diabetes: Blood sugar (RBSL) measurement camp

  • Cardio Vascular diseases: BP, RBSL, BMI (Obesity), W:H ratio, etc.

  • Eye check up camps

Participants may screened at either a medical facility or enroll for screening camps. Post screening, a participant may or may not be positive for the particular disease or risk factor but gains considerable health education about the highly prevalent health condition and what he can do about it.

If a participant has the condition screened for:

  • he/she is counselled about the same

  • treated then and there ( if a doctor is present)

  • or informed about referral systems

 

Pic: CHW performing a physical examination

Pic: CHW performing a BP measurement on a patient