Physical Examination Skills Year 1

The mastery of physical examination skills calls for the integration of cognitive, technical, and perceptual discrimination skills. This "Physical Examination Skills" syllabus for first year medical students contains content and activities based on my original research and development funded by the US Department of Education; on medical student and internal medicine and primary care intern reports of the most challenging technical maneuvers and most difficult to discriminate abnormal physical findings; and the error patterns on the performance of focused physical exams by 2,215 medical students across different years from 10 US medical schools.

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Acknowledgements: Funded in part by US Department of Education FIPSE Grant #P116B960417. 1996-2000, Principal Investigator Cheryl A. Walters, MD.

Medical Illustrations, Valerie Martin (an independant artist) of Southington, CT who created the images for "Physical Examination Skills, Year 1".


Lesson Plans for the Lungs and Abdomen using VH Dissector Pro 4.5 based on the Visible Human Project developed in collaboration with Human Anatomy and Development course faculty Lawrence J. Rizzolo, PhD, Director of Medical Studies, and William B. Stewart, PhD, Chief Emeritus, Section of Anatomy, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT.


Companion textbook and CD, "Textbook of Physical Diagnosis: History and Examination," 5th Edition, 2006 by friend and colleague Mark H. Swartz, MD, Medical Director Emeritus, The Morchand Center for Clinical Competence, the Icahn School of Medicine, New York, NY.

Year 1 Study Sections

  1. INTRODUCTION
  2. VITAL SIGNS-1A
  3. NOSE, ORAL CAVITY, and NECK-1B
  4. HOW TO USE THE OPHTHALMOSCOPE-2A
  1. HANDLING THE OTOTOSCOPE-2B
  2. LUNG SOUNDS-3
  3. HEART SOUNDS-4
  4. ABDOMINAL and PERIPHERAL VASCULAR EXAMS-5
  1. NEURO EXAM PART 1-6
  2. NEURO EXAM PART 2 and GALS MUSCULOSKELETAL EXAM-7
  3. FLOW OF THE HEAD-TO-TOE EXAM-8
  4. PE HEAD-TO-TOE WITH DRAPING-9