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When recording a patient's history, which of the following should be written with quotation marks (" ") indicating the patient's own words?

A) Symptoms
B) Diagnosis
C) Medications
D) Vital signs

1 Answer

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Final answer:

Symptoms should be recorded with quotation marks in a patient's history to accurately reflect the patient's subjective experiences like pain or nausea.

Step-by-step explanation:

When recording a patient's history, the information that should be written with quotation marks (""), indicating the patient's own words, refers to A) Symptoms. This is because symptoms are subjective experiences reported by the patient, such as nausea, loss of appetite, and pain. Unlike vital signs or a diagnosis, which are objective and can be measured or determined by a clinician, symptoms can vary based on the patient's perception and need to be recorded exactly as described by the patient to capture the full nuance of their experience. Clinicians may also attempt to quantify symptoms using tools like the Wong-Baker Faces pain-rating scale or by measuring skin conductance fluctuations due to skin sympathetic nerve activity resulting from the stressor of pain.

Symptoms are subjective and experienced by the patient, such as nausea, loss of appetite, and pain. They cannot be clinically confirmed or objectively measured, so it's important to record the patient's own words to accurately capture their experience.

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