For some reason, EMS personnel struggle with the concept of objective information being different from subjective information.  Most of us utilize the SOAP (or SOTC) documentation format when writing our narrative; therefore we have a place to specifically write objective information and subjective information.  

Objective:  Information that you can perceive utilizing any of your 5 senses (hopefully you don’t taste your patient, but if you did, the information would be objective).   The following are examples of objective information:

• Vital Signs- classic objective observation because you have to measure vital signs with various medical instruments.
• Assessment – keeping in mind that we assess our patient utilizing only 4 methods: auscultation (listening  – usually with a stethoscope), palpation (touching), inspection (looking), and percussion (tapping and listening for varying pitches).   When you do any of the above, it is recorded as an objective finding.
• Observation of the patients’ surroundings, which could include weather, physical location, condition of building (say a person was injured in a deck collapse), etc.
• Observations made by your partner.  This is arguable, but if you are working with somebody whom you trust to take good vital signs, this information can be considered objective.  Keep in mind that this is pretty much limited to the person you actually work with on your ambulance and nobody else. 

Subjective:  What the other people tell you, including the patient, bystanders, other first responders, etc.  The following are examples of objective information:

• Anything the patient says.  This would include chief complaint, medical history, etc.
• Medications prescribed to the patient:  A lot of people get this one confused, but even if you have a bag of medications with the patients’ name on the bottle, this is still considered subjective information.
• Any information obtained during the SAMPLE history.
• Anything a first responder tells you.  This includes firemen, police officers, your supervisor, anybody not assigned to your ambulance.
• Any palliative (alleviating or relieving) or aggravating factor you discover during your assessment.  For example, if the patient advises that the chest pain goes away when he/she raises their hands over their heads, this would be considered subjective.   If the patient advises that the pain worsens when you touch their abdomen, it would still be subjective.   Now if you felt the abdominal muscles contracting when you touched the abdomen that would be an objective sign.