Injury Question Suggestion

[Will Morris]

Rip,

Combing through the last several months of questions, especially those regarding injuries, it became apparent just how little information was given by posters seeking advice on how to deal with their injuries. As such, I thought about what a health care provider would need to know subjectively to be able to form a working hypothesis for a diagnosis, and obviously, no one on the board is doing an objective evaluation of the poster, subjective information is all we can get. I propose the following format (or something similar) as the standard for an individual to fill out when asking for new (acute) injury advice.

- Age, Gender, current training status (new to training, experienced lifter, elite competitor, etc.)

- Chief Complaint (what hurts and what makes it bad enough to seek help on the board)....example, "my right shoulder hurts when I try bench pressing"

- Narrative describing the mechanism of injury: In your own words, explain what happened, what you were doing, where it hurt, how long has it been since you first injured it

- Pain (on a scale of 1-10),
- Describe the pain (burning, shooting, aching, deep, sharp)
- What makes it better?
- What makes it worse?
- How do your symptoms behave throughout the day?

- Signs and Symptoms (describe what the area looks like....swelling, bruising, etc.) and describe briefly what you can or can't do as a result of the injury

This may seem like an inconvenience for the original poster, however, if you take into account all the follow on posts asking for this very information, you would see that some time spent on the initial post would save time on the back end.

Of course, it is probably worth noting that any health care provider on this board is not answering any of these questions in a health care provider capacity, and as such, someone seeking advice on an injury has to be aware that all information provided to them on this board cannot be taken as a substitute for true medical advice. The information being provided should only be taken as general health information.

Rip, feel free to modify as you see fit, or feel even more free to can the whole idea.

[Jonathon Sullivan]

Excellent. Ashamed I haven't thought of this.

We might also ask if there has been a medical evaluation, if any tests (especially imaging studies) have been completed, and if a putative diagnosis is at hand.