clinical decision analysis

clinical

1. pertaining to a clinic or to the bedside and therefore carried out on the living animal.

2. pertaining to or founded on actual observation and treatment of patients, as distinguished from theoretical or experimental.

3. productive of clinical signs; thus clinical disease as distinct from subclinical.

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clinical data storage

storage of clinical data about patients; may be paper or computerized.

clinical decision analysis

the application of clinical, epidemiological and other data to influence outome probability and alternative decisions in such areas as surgery and pharmaceutical treatment.

clinical epidemiologist

an epidemiologist who sees patients and herds in a clinical capacity but with an epidemiological viewpoint. An investigator of clinical problems affecting populations.

clinical epidemiology

the application by a veterinarian who provides direct patient care of epidemiological methods to the study of diagnosis and therapeutics in order to promote efficiency in clinical care.

clinical examination

an examination of a patient including taking the history, physical examination by palpation, auscultation and percussion, clinicopathological examination and examination of the environment.

clinical judgment

exerted while the patient is still alive; the critical decisions made on the basis of scientific observations but with the added skill provided by long experience of similar cases. To this must be added an innate ability to make balanced judgments based not only on the state of the animal and its predictable future but also on some consideration for the patient's overall well-being and the client's financial status and degree of psychological, or in some cases actual, dependence on the patient.

clinical nomenclature

a catalog of the names given to diseases and problems of animals; usually alphabetical, may be numerical. Should contain keywords (including key diagnoses and key signs) and synonyms with each list related to the other. Because of the need to sort banks of clinical data into categories it is essential that recording be accurate and that the catalog be limited—a policy of limited vocabulary.

clinical pathologist

a veterinarian skilled in clinical pathology.

clinical pathology

the examination of diseased tissues, fluids or other materials from a living patient, using all of the techniques available including chemistry, hematology, enzymology, cytology, microbiology, parasitology, protozoology, immunology and histopathology.

clinical pharmacology

the study of the actions and metabolism of drugs in living animals.

clinical policies

professional rules of thumb which are used to decide on the management of a case when there are no research results on which to base decisions. They are policies originated by the senior members of the profession, especially those in academic posts.

clinical propedeutics

preliminary training in the clinical sciences; the introduction to veterinary medicine, surgery and animal reproduction.

clinical qualifiers

adjectives used to qualify diagnoses using terms from within a group of standard variables, e.g. chronic or acute, ovine or bovine, benign or malignant, clinical or latent.

clinical record

the record, made at the time, of clinical examinations, treatments and advice given, complete with dates, names of individuals concerned and drugs or tests used. The record is desirable for the purpose of evaluating the patient's progress, and essential from the legal point of view if arguments should arise about competence or justness of charges made.

clinical signs

the abnormalities of structure or function observed in the patient by the veterinarian or the client. These are customarily graded according to severity, e.g. severe, moderate, mild, and according to speed of onset and progress, e.g. peracute, acute, subacute, chronic, intermittent.

clinical trials

a planned experiment, conducted in the field, designed to test the efficacy of a treatment in herds of animals by comparing the outcome under the test treatment with that observed in a comparable group of animal herds receiving a control treatment.

clinical vocabulary

a catalog of terms approved for use in the description of clinical signs and problems, and for the definition of diagnoses and diseases.

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clinical decision analysis

A quantitative approach to complex decisions, first used by the military and industry, and increasingly popular in medicine, as a vehicle for creating useful decision-making models. See Algorithm, Critical pathway, Decision analysis.