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Hindi Review Article
Teaching Patient-Centered Safety-Netting in Primary Care
Silverston P*University Campus Suffolk, Ipswich, United Kingdom
- Corresponding Author:
- Paul Silverston, BA Jt Hons, MBChB, PFHEA
Snailwell, Cambridgeshire, United Kingdom
Tel: +443-287-4843
Fax: 410-502-7029
E-mail: paul.silverston@btinternet.com
Received Date: June 06, 2016; Accepted Date: June 23, 2016; Published Date: June 30, 2016
Citation: Silverston P (2016) Teaching Patient-Centered Safety-Netting in Primary Care. J Community Med Health Educ 6:447. doi: 10.4172/2161-0711.1000447
Copyright: © 2016 Silverston P. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
In primary care, it is common for patients to present during the early stages of illness with non-specific symptoms, at which time the positive clinical findings in the history and examination that enable a clinician to make a firm diagnosis, or to discriminate between a serious and minor illness, may not have developed. Where diagnostic uncertainty exists, there is a need for the doctor to provide safety-netting advice so as to reduce the risk of misdiagnosis inherent in making a diagnosis at this early stage in the patient’s illness. It is important that medical students and junior doctors learn the principles and practices of safety-netting, including the patient’s perspective of why safety-netting advice is required and how best to communicate this advice to the patient in a way that is comprehensible to them. This article discusses how simple visual models can be used in the teaching of safetynetting skills to help discuss the rationale for safety-netting with the patient.
