{"id":264,"date":"2020-09-06T23:46:42","date_gmt":"2020-09-06T23:46:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.georgiaemsacademy.com\/?p=264"},"modified":"2020-09-07T01:36:32","modified_gmt":"2020-09-07T01:36:32","slug":"subjective-versus-objective","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.georgiaemsacademy.com\/?p=264","title":{"rendered":"Subjective versus Objective"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>For some reason, EMS personnel struggle with the concept of objective information being different from subjective information.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Objective:&nbsp; Information that you can perceive utilizing any of your 5 senses (hopefully you don\u2019t taste your patient, but if you did, the information would be objective). &nbsp; The following are examples of objective information:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul><li>Vital Signs- classic objective observation because you have to measure vital signs with various medical instruments.<\/li><li>Assessment \u2013 keeping in mind that we assess our patient utilizing only 4 methods: auscultation (listening&nbsp; &#8211; usually with a stethoscope), palpation (touching), inspection (looking), and percussion (tapping and listening for varying pitches). &nbsp; When you do any of the above, it is recorded as an objective finding.<\/li><li>Observation of the patients\u2019 surroundings, which could include weather, physical location, condition of building (say a person was injured in a deck collapse), etc.<\/li><li>Observations made by your partner.&nbsp; This is arguable, but if you are working with somebody whom you trust to take good vital signs, this information can be considered objective.&nbsp; Keep in mind that this is pretty much limited to the person you actually work with on your ambulance and nobody else.&nbsp;<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Subjective:&nbsp; What the other people tell you, including the patient, bystanders, other first responders, etc.&nbsp; The following are examples of objective information:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul><li>Anything the patient says.&nbsp; This would include chief complaint, medical history, etc.<\/li><li>Medications prescribed to the patient:&nbsp; A lot of people get this one confused, but even if you have a bag of medications with the patients\u2019 name on the bottle, this is still considered subjective information.<\/li><li>Any information obtained during the SAMPLE history.<\/li><li>Anything a first responder tells you.&nbsp; This includes firemen, police officers, your supervisor, anybody not assigned to your ambulance.<\/li><li>Any palliative (alleviating or relieving) or aggravating factor you discover during your assessment.&nbsp; 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. &nbsp; If the patient advises that the pain worsens when you touch their abdomen, it would still be subjective. &nbsp; Now if you felt the abdominal muscles contracting when you touched the abdomen that would be an objective sign.&nbsp;<\/li><\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For some reason, EMS personnel struggle with the concept of objective information being different from subjective information.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp;&nbsp; Objective:&nbsp; Information that you can perceive utilizing any of your 5 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[27,23],"tags":[46],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.georgiaemsacademy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.georgiaemsacademy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.georgiaemsacademy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.georgiaemsacademy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.georgiaemsacademy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=264"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.georgiaemsacademy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":265,"href":"https:\/\/blog.georgiaemsacademy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264\/revisions\/265"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.georgiaemsacademy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=264"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.georgiaemsacademy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=264"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.georgiaemsacademy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}