Symptomatology

When medical students learn medicine through textbooks, they approach from an index of diseases. It means that one disease makes us think of the symptoms, pathological mechanism, treatment, and prognosis.

On the other hand, in clinical situation, we have to think differential diagnosis from complain of patients.

Now I study mock medical interview. This preparation is good training of learning symptomatology as Dr.O told us last weekend.
In the training, I can find how my differential diagnosis is not enough.
Through this, I fail so much, and this experience are useful for me to see real patients.

Of course, there are Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) in Japanese school of medicine. However, in OSCE, we just learn how to get information systematically from a patient. There is no part to think differential diagnosis and plan. It looks like we can get subjective and objective information, but no assessment and plan in medical chart.