Foundations of Clinical Diagnosis

Abstract

Diagnostic systems exist in many disciplines. Strengths and weaknesses of such diagnostic systems vary considerably within and among disciplinary domains of the health sciences. The logical framework behind each diagnostic process involves identifying a condition, seeking causes, and establishing a prognosis and a treatment. Notably, a clinical diagnosis can be intended as either a process leading to a present-based judgment, aiming to cluster events associated with a disease; or as the final result of such process. A diagnostic judgment focuses on the past when it attempts to isolate possible causes, and towards the future when it indicates prognoses and treatments. This chapter suggests ways to differentiate between nursing diagnosis and medical diagnoses based on epistemological and clinical considerations. The proposed logical framework has first been investigated from a medical perspective and then compared to a nursing taxonomy-based diagnostic system in order to evaluate it in accordance with some epistemological aspects of diagnostic judgment.