Diagnostic Schemas: Form and Function

Abstract

Diagnostic schemas are frameworks that depict organized clinical knowledge and serve as a bridge between problem representation and differential diagnosis generation. Schema-based problem solving is increasingly used among clinician educators and is widely featured in digital media. We examine the origins of schemas and their theoretical background, review existing literature on their applications in medicine, and explore their utility for learners and teachers.

Reclaiming the review of systems: An opportunity for medical educators

“…This approach to information gathering centers on the patient's concern (such as chest pain) to drive questioning while a differential diagnosis is built as information is collected. As students gain more organized knowledge in the forms of schemas (frameworks to analyze problems like jaundice) and illness scripts (exemplar profiles of disease like hepatitis A), they become increasingly skilled in selecting the relevant questions that increase or decrease the probability of candidate diseases 11,12 …”