Reference no: EM132853194

Differential Diagnosis for Skin Conditions

Photo Credit: Getty Images/iStockphoto

• Properly identifying the cause and type of a patient's 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.

Question 1: Review the Skin Conditions document provided in this week's Learning Resources, and select one condition to closely examine for this Lab Assignment.

Question 2: Consider the abnormal physical characteristics you observe in the graphic you selected. How would you describe the characteristics using clinical terminologies?

Question 3: Explore different conditions that could be the cause of the skin abnormalities in the graphics you selected.

Question 4: Consider which of the conditions is most likely to be the correct diagnosis, and why.

Question 5: Search the Walden library for one evidence-based practice, peer-reviewed article based on the skin condition you chose for this Lab Assignment.

Question 6: Review the Comprehensive SOAP Exemplar found in this week's Learning Resources to guide you as you prepare your SOAP note.