Properly identifying the cause and type of a patients skin condition involves a process of elimination known as differential diagnosis. Using this process, a health professional can take a given set of physical abnormalities, vital signs, health assessment findings, and patient descriptions of symptoms, and incrementally narrow them down until one diagnosis is determined as the most likely cause.
In this Lab Assignment, you will examine several visual representations of various skin conditions, describe your observations, and use the techniques of differential diagnosis to determine the most likely condition.
To Prepare
· Review the Skin Conditions document provided in this weeks Learning Resources, and select one condition to closely examine for this Lab Assignment.
· Consider the abnormal physical characteristics you observe in the graphic you selected. How would you describe the characteristics using clinical terminologies?
· Explore different conditions that could be the cause of the skin abnormalities in the graphics you selected.
· Consider which of the conditions is most likely to be the correct diagnosis, and why.
· Search the Walden library for one evidence-based practice, peer-reviewed article based on the skin condition you chose for this Lab Assignment.
· Review the Comprehensive SOAP Exemplar found in this weeks Learning Resources to guide you as you prepare your SOAP note.
· Download the SOAP Template found in this weeks Learning Resources, and use this template to complete this Lab Assignment.
The Lab Assignment
Choose one This week you will be submitting your paper in SOAP format.  The template and the grading rubric for this format is located in the Course Info folder.  This is the format approved for this course, so please follow it.  You will be choosing one skin graphic to write your SOAP note. Need to organize your data in this format…..and under “S” you will need to ask your questions…but obviously your patient cannot answer you.  So….under “S”….list all of the questions that you would ask the patient from the template list, including Meds, Allergies, ROS, etc…….think about everything that you would need to know and ask to make a clinical decision.  The “O” is what the condition looks like.  This is the objective piece of the note…..you do not ask the patient questions here, it is just what you observe.    Be specific!!!  Describe the lesion ie:  size, location, characteristics, etc….  think of this as documenting directly in a patient’s chart.  A/P are your list of differentials with rationale on why you chose those diagnosis.  You list them from most likely to least likely.
· This week you will be submitting your paper in SOAP format.  The template and the grading rubric for this format is located in the Course Info folder.  This is the format approved for this course, so please follow it.  You will be choosing one skin graphic to write your SOAP note. Need to organize your data in this format…..and under “S” you will need to ask your questions…but obviously your patient cannot answer you.  So….under “S”….list all of the questions that you would ask the patient from the template list, including Meds, Allergies, ROS, etc…….think about everything that you would need to know and ask to make a clinical decision.  The “O” is what the condition looks like.  This is the objective piece of the note…..you do not ask the patient questions here, it is just what you observe.    Be specific!!!  Describe the lesion ie:  size, location, characteristics, etc….  think of this as documenting directly in a patient’s chart.  A/P are your list of differentials with rationale on why you chose those diagnosis.  You list them from most likely to least likely.