Before attempting this assignment, please review the following notes on vertical reading and illness scripts:

COMPARE AND CONTRAST LEARNING AND VERTICAL READING?

1. Vertical reading is a method of active or intentional reading that allows you to more easily identify and store the most important facts about the diseases in question by capitalizing on the brain’s love of compare and contrast activities.
2. Vertical Reading requires you to always compare and contrast your understanding of different disease characteristics IN CONTRAST TO another disease that causes similar signs and symptoms (similar syndromes.)
3. Vertical Reading, begins by identifying a core syndrome and then a three disease or conditions that can cause that syndrome. This is known as the DIAGNOSTIC TRIAD.
4. Vertical Reading requires the reader to complete a chart or a venn diagram with only those features that are truly DIFFERENTIATING (present in only two out of the three diseases considered, thus the presence of this feature allows you to eliminate one diagnosis from consideration in a patient presenting with this syndrome) or KEY features: present in only one of the three conditions in this triad, thus allowing you to target this as the right diagnosis.

  

WHAT IS A DISEASE ILLNESS SCRIPT?

Key Points about illness scripts:

1. ILLNESS SCRIPTS are classic disease representations.  Once the classics representations have been learned, the exceptions to the rule can be learned.  Experts use illness scripts or classic disease representations to make diagnoses by MATCHING disease illness scripts to a patient’s personal illness script.
2. Illness scripts have four components:  epidemiology (who gets it?), temporal course/pattern (how does it present with respect to time?), syndrome statement (the key signs and symptoms of the disease) and the mechanisms of the disease.
3. The important features are those that help you distinguish between diseases capable of producing the same syndrome.  (for example, pneumonia, pulmonary embolism and heart failure all can cause the syndrome of acute respiratory failure. Important features are those signs and symptoms that would make you tend to think it is one problem rather than the other.)

ASSIGNMENT:
Referring to any medical text you have available, complete a Vertical Reading Chart for the syndromes of Acute Dyspnea, Abnormal Lung Exam With Dyspnea, and Abdominal Pain. Then, using the Vertical Reading Chart you have constructed, complete the Illness Scripts for each of the three diseases associated with each syndrome.  (Templates are available in Word and PDF formats). If the concept of Venn Diagrams for Illness Script development worked well for you, you can also use that method in your planning.  Finally, using the completed template, fill in the text boxes below with your answers from the Illness Script section of your template.

SCORING:
After the assignment is closed, students will be provided with the correct illness scripts for each disease listed. Based on these, students will evaluate each question on the following criteria:

0 points: No submission
1 point: Epidemiology, time course, syndrome statement, or mechanisms of disease for only one of three diseases is included
2 points: Epidemiology, time course, syndrome statement, or mechanisms of disease for only two of three diseases is included
3 points: Epidemiology, time course, syndrome statement, or mechanisms of disease for all three of three diseases is included
4 points: Epidemiology, time course, syndrome statement, or mechanisms of disease for all three of three diseases is included AND one is consistent with the answers provided
5 points: Epidemiology, time course, syndrome statement, or mechanisms of disease for all three of three diseases is included AND two or three are consistent with the answers provided