Synonyms
Clinical judgment; Clinical result; Clinical test; Finding of observation
Definition
- 1.
The act of measuring, questioning, evaluating, or otherwise observing a patient or a specimen from a patient in healthcare; the act of making a clinical judgment.
- 2.
The result, answer, judgment, or knowledge gained from the act of observing a patient or a specimen from a patient in healthcare.
These two definitions of “observation” have caused confusion in clinical communications, especially when applying the term to the rigor of standardized terminologies. When developing a list of observations, the terminologists have differed on whether the list of terms should refer to the “act of observing” or the “result of the observation.”
Logical Observation Identifiers Names and Codes (LOINC) (www.loinc.org) focus on observation as the “act of observing.” Systematized Nomenclature of Medicine (SNOMED) (www.ihtsdo.org) asserts that “General finding of observation of patient” is a synonym for...
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsRecommended Reading
Russler D, et al. Influences of the unified service action model on the HL7 reference information model. In: JAMIA Symposium Supplement, Proceedings SCAMC; 1999. p. 930–4.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Section Editor information
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature
About this entry
Cite this entry
Russler, D. (2018). Clinical Observation. In: Liu, L., Özsu, M.T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Database Systems. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-8265-9_61
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-8265-9_61
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY
Print ISBN: 978-1-4614-8266-6
Online ISBN: 978-1-4614-8265-9
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceReference Module Computer Science and Engineering