Have you heard about the term health screening? Health screening is a process that involves checking your health for any diseases or health complications. As the name suggests, it acts as a screening in order to detect a disease before the symptoms manifest itself. Nowadays, health screening is considered as a very important tool in helping to decrease the workload of healthcare professionals by early detection of a disease. So, what is included in a health screening? Here, we will discuss each step that is included in the process and we will go through them in detail.
1. Consultation
If you are interested in getting yourself checked, the first thing that you need to do is to book an appointment with your doctor. Once your appointment is booked, the only thing left that you need to do is present yourself on the day of your appointment. The first thing that your doctor will do is called consultation. During consultation, your doctor will ask some questions regarding your health such as your medical history, medication, social life, your disease if any and also your family history. Based on this information from the consultation, your doctor will decide whether you are having a disease or you are a healthy guy.
2. Physical examination
When you go for a health screening, physical examination is a must. This examination aims to find any abnormality that can be felt through physical checkup. In this process, your doctor will start with your body parts that he feels related to your initial diagnosis first. If necessary, he will also need to check other body parts that might include your chest, abdomen, back, eyes and also your extremities. By doing these physical checks on your body, your doctor will get to see a glimpse of their initial diagnosis.
3. Lab investigation
In order to test their initial diagnosis and confirm whether it’s the right diagnosis, your doctor will need to do some lab investigation if needed. In order to conduct a lab investigation, the responsible scientist will need a sample first. This sample will need to be taken from your body and it usually involves your body fluid, blood, hair or saliva. In certain cases, your urine or any bodily discharge might be needed. This process is very essential in knowing and confirming your initial diagnosis. From those samples, they will get a lot of information about your current condition. For example, blood samples alone can give a lot of information such as about your thyroid, blood, kidney, heart and also other organs as well. Hence, this is why it is regarded as one of the most important aspects during health screening. However, if your doctor thinks you are healthy and no test needs to be done, then you can skip this part.
4. Results
After the screening process, all that was left is to wait for the result. As mentioned before, if your doctor thinks you are healthy, then you might go back without needing to come again. Besides, you might go back home early as well. In some cases, that needs a lab investigation, the result will depend on the time taken for the lab to process your sample. Some simple investigations will only take some minutes to finish. In certain cases, some investigations can take days to finish. Usually in this case, your doctor will call you once the result is out. Depending on your result, the doctor will then discuss what to do next. If your health is great, then nothing you need to worry about. But if you do have a disease, then an intervention is needed.