Today, with many people living longer and more/better knowledge coming out every day on medical problems and patient care, it’s always helpful to keep an open mind and a “slight doubt” about patients. This is especially true if your patient in elderly, a female, a diabetic, and/or has non specific EKG changes. An example of this is that in the elderly, the chief complaint of those having an MI is NOT usually chest pain, but dyspnea.
Some questions to ask a person having chest pain/discomfort are:
1)What is the character of your pain?
2)What is the severity of your pain (1–10)?
3)Have you had prior similar pain?
4)Do you have a cardiac history?
5)Is the pain similar to any prior AMI or angina?
It doesn’t hurt to educate you patient that we (in medicine) consider ANY discomfort in the chest as pain. Many people will say they don’t have “pain” but just some discomfort. If they understand that we consider that “pain”, it may help you better assess and treat them.
