A standardized system for patient documentation.

Abstract

Properly used, patient photography is of value for health-care service, education and research. Many stages in an illness or disease can be better described with photographs than with words. Some of the reasons why photographs are not routinely used in patient records have been discussed by Cederblom and Roos (1980): pictures taken of a particular patient on different occasions are seldom comparable; the time between referring a patient to the photographer and having the picture available to the doctor is too long in many hospitals; the photographic archives are mostly incomplete, difficult to use and therefore of little value. To reduce these problems a new system for patient documentation, the 'PADOC' system, has been developed and has been used successfully at Sahlgren's Hospital, Gothenburg, Sweden, since 1979.