Talk:General medical examination

A fact from General medical examination appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 26 August 2008, and was viewed approximately 1,906 times (disclaimer) (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that although routine annual medical examinations are popular with the public, there is limited evidence of their effectiveness and they are considered inadvisable by some health organisations?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2008/August.

Wikipedia

Rename

I'm not entirely sure what the best title for this article would be. --Steven Fruitsmaak (Reply) 21:07, 18 August 2008 (UTC) Would preventative medical examination not be a better default name for the article to live? I base this upon the line in the article "...involving yearly (or less frequent) visits". —Cyclonenim^T@lk? 21:44, 18 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure, that's why I requested opinions on the talk page. What would patients call it, perhaps something with "physical", or "health check-up"? The article deals mostly with annual visits, which is still the standard for many GPs and patients, at least in Belgium. Let's take this to the talk page, and discuss about the trophy here. --Steven Fruitsmaak (Reply) 21:52, 18 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

How about Routine medical examination? —Cyclonenim^T@lk? 21:56, 18 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Don't think that would be the best title, doesn't really describe it enough. --Steven Fruitsmaak (Reply) 17:45, 20 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

An icd9 lookup for V70.0 turns up "Routine general medical examination at a health care facility" or "Health checkup" with the more general V70 showing as "General medical examination". Something like annual physical works, I know I'm used to hearing V72.31 referred to as an "annual well woman". I tend to like something along the lines of general medical examination compared to annual physical because the article currently goes into a bit of detail about how it isn't necessarily annual, and compared to health checkup which is a little more vague. -Optigan13 (talk) 08:17, 21 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Surprised to see Belgium mentioned above. Aside from that, this must be one of the most US-centric articles here. Tempted to add: ==Internationally== A well-known concept in US and Belgium, unknown in Norway. Or rename to American annual physical. :-) --Hordaland (talk) 18:24, 21 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'm unfamiliar with the health care system in Norway, but I think this form of medicine might be linked to a fee-for-service system. Agree that it probably reads US-centric, however I can assure you that I personally have no such POV; the literature on this topic is just mostly American, as are the core clinical journals. Feel free to rewrite any part you feel is of limited geographic scope. --Steven Fruitsmaak (Reply) 11:53, 22 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Proposed merge with Physical examination

Based on what I've read on the Physical examination and General medical examination articles, it seems to me that there exist four types of routine check-ups:

A check-up required in order to obtain health insurance. (Source: [1]).
A check-up required in order to obtain certain jobs with certain employers. (Source: [2]).
An very-comprehensive annual "executive" check-up,[3] such as the Medcan Clinic's five-hour, CAD$2500 "executive" check-up.
An ordinary yearly check-up, like many people get from their doctor once every year.

Our Physical examination article discusses types 1, 2, 3, and 4, but needs copyediting. Our General medical examination article discusses only type 4, but is clean and well-organized.

Should we keep both articles, or should we merge them? And if we should merge them, which one should we keep?

Cheers, —Unforgettableid (talk) 06:36, 19 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm, given I am a doctor I must say it is very tempting to merge them. I am trying to think if there is a situation where I'd use one term and not the other....and not really coming up with any. Within medicine we'd use physical examination but General medical examination strikes me as more accessible. Actually I don't think we'd call (1) above General medical examination (we'd drop the "general") Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 13:10, 16 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I think we need to redistribute the content. GME is clearly about regular "check-ups", but some of that has spilled over into "physical examination" incorrectly. I would like "physical examination" to be much more comprehensive about the direct examination while GME may include bedside tests such as blood sugar, spirometry, urinalysis and electrocardiography.

There are good sources for the "physical examination" article, such as ISBN 0781767180 and the JAMA "Rational Clinical Examination" articles. Similarly, there is a literature (including Cochrane) about routine assessments. JFW | T@lk 16:34, 16 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Tentative support for merge, if of course someone is willing to do the work... Lesion (talk) 17:56, 16 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

A general medical exam is a type of physical exam. We ER docs do physician exams but not general medical exams. Support merge into physician exam as a heading. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 01:24, 20 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]