By: Tom Cloyd - 1 min. read (Published: 24-05-29; reviewed: 2024-06-06:1619 Pacific Time (USA))
“’All diagnoses are provisional formulae designed for action’. Diagnoses are provisional because they will be altered by further evidence. Diagnoses are designed because they are created by humans. Diagnoses are for action because they are intended to help a person effect a change in their health that they could not make without the clinician’s diagnosis. When a clinician diagnoses a person, they inaugurate treatment, which makes a range of medically regulated experiences available to the patient. ‘Diagnosis then implies an under- standing of disease processes, their sites and their causes’. [A] diagnosis is not a label, but a way of understanding. ‘Only by skill in observation, and interpretation in the light of knowedge and experience, only by exercising care and patience and by cultivating wisdom and judgment can be reached that most desirable of medical achievements—ability to diagnose disease’. Diagnosis is an act of prudential judgment seeking understanding of another person.”
FROM: Nussbaum, A. M. (2022). The pocket guide to the DSM-5-TR diagnostic exam (First edition). American Psychiatric Association Publishing, p. 5.
Quotes in the text are from: Cohen, H. (1943). The nature, methods and purpose of diagnosis. The Lancet, 241(6227), 23-25. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(00)70703-3understanding
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