Subjective/Objective Symptom

I would suggest a physical assessment text, such as Bates, to help you discern the difference between objective and subjective.

I am trying to determine from the followings which one is subjective and which one is objective within the Physical Examination. I would appreciate your input.

Bleeding

Abdominal Pain

Fatigue

Diarrhea

Chest Pain

Depression

Feer

Nausea

Vomiting.

One thing that helped me learn was thinking about something that is observable or measurable as objective, and things that are stated are subjective. For example, you can see someone is bleeding, that's objective. There's no arguing that there is blood coming from site X. Pain is a stated symptom, and will vary from one person to the next, even for the same issue, thus it is subjective. Does that make sense?

As RunBabyRN stated....

Objective: observable or measurable; a fact or reality that can be detected by any observer

(vital signs, bleeding)

Subjective: cannot be measured and are stated by the patient; how the patient perceives something

(pain, depression)

Hope this helps, however, I do agree that you should find a good textbook and put the effort into making sure you understand the difference. I don't think you're going to find many people willing to do your homework for you and I doubt you're instructor is going to let you reference AN during your exam

Good luck!

It sounds as if you are copying your paper/exam question right off the page in front of you and wanting someone to go down your list with an answer for each.

Please realize you are not doing yourself any favors by not taking the time to understand the concepts you will need to know to be a competent nurse (I'm just guessing that you are in some type of nursing program). And we would not be doing you any favors by just giving you the answers.

We've all been there....and we're all proud that we made it though. I'm sure there are a few here and there who slid by, doing the minimal work with minimal effort to just barely pass, but most of us worked our behinds off in school (many in addition to working, kids, keeping a household going) because we wanted to be able to properly care for our patients.

Which type of nurse would you want taking care of YOU?

I hope after reading the above, you can understand why some of us take offense to your request for answers. Take your education seriously; people will literally be putting their lives, safety and trust into your hands.

What is "feer"?

I'm really hoping an auto-correct blooper.

Tell us what you think and then I'll give you a really easy way to differentiate subjective from objective.

Thank you for the replies!

I was confused in particular regarding chest pain as some textbooks categorizes it as objective and other sources as subjective. I believe it to be subjective but after reading other textbooks I was not sure about that. Feer is Fever. So here what I came up with - like I said I believe pain to be subjective but the answers below are according to some textbook materials:

Bleeding - Objective

Abdominal pain - Objective

Fatigue - Objective

Pupil observation - Objective

Diarrhea - Subjective

Chest pain- Objective

Depression - Objective

Fever -Objective

Nausea - Subjective

Vomiting - Objective

Chest and abdominal pain, fatigue and depression I say are subjective...you are going by what the patients tells you (even if there are signs, such as guarding, they can be faked or exaggerated, so you really are just going by what patient is saying). Diarrhea I say objective...you can "see" that they have it.

:)