Teaching Patient-Centered Safety-Netting in Primary Care

Abstract

In primary care, it is common for patients to present during the early stages of illness with non-specific symptoms, at which time the positive clinical findings in the history and examination that enable a clinician to make a firm diagnosis, or to discriminate between a serious and minor illness, may not have developed. Where diagnostic uncertainty exists, there is a need for the doctor to provide safety-netting advice so as to reduce the risk of misdiagnosis inherent in making a diagnosis at this early stage in the patient’s illness. It is important that medical students and junior doctors learn the principles and practices of safety-netting, including the patient’s perspective of why safety-netting advice is required and how best to communicate this advice to the patient in a way that is comprehensible to them. This article discusses how simple visual models can be used in the teaching of safetynetting skills to help discuss the rationale for safety-netting with the patient.