Summary to date 13Feb2008:
Hmm - varied views.
I'll take a risk here and try to summarise and add a few more questions... - Reason for Encounter is a different clinical concept from Presenting (or chief) Complaint - DO YOU AGREE?
- "Reason for Encounter" is the reason for attendance - seeking emergency help/Pre-employment medical/consultation/therapy etC
- "Presenting Complaint" is a description of symptoms or issues or something that happened to the patient.
- There may be multiple symptoms so better to consider Presenting complaint (and enable as many as needed) rather than Chief complaint (which implies one main one).
- May be better not to limit it to 'symptoms', but open it to broader issues as well eg want to stop smoking, lose weight, relationship problems (ie issues).
- Currently the concept "Presenting Complaint" concept is reflected by an archetype "Story" in NHS work - this archetype has been named to deliberately 'de-medicalise' it, so that it can be used for a broader range of purposes and contexts than doctors seeing patients, including Personal Health Records, Counselling etc etc. It has been renamed as "Presenting Complaint" in templates used for a medical purpose eg a consultation record. IS THIS APPROPRIATE? SHOULD PRESENTING COMPLAINT BE A SPECIALISATION OF STORY OR RENAME IN TEMPLATES?
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