OPQRST

src: i.ytimg.com

OPQRST is a mnemonic used by medical professionals to accurately locate the reason for the patient's symptoms and history in case of acute illness. This is specifically tailored to get possible heart attack symptoms. Each letter stands for an important line of questions for patient assessment. These are usually taken along with the vital signs and history of SAMPLES and will usually be recorded by the person providing the assistance, as in the "Subjective" section of the SOAP record, for later reference.

"PQRST" (prefix "O") is sometimes used together.

The term "OPQRST-AAA" adds "mitigating factors", "related symptoms", and "attribution/adaptation".

Video OPQRST

Use

The parts of mnemonics are:

Event onset: What the patient does when it is started (active, inactive, stressful), does the patient believe that activity causes pain, and whether the onset is sudden, gradual or part of the ongoing chronic problem.
Provocation or paliation: Whether movement, pressure (like palpation) or other external factors make the problem better or worse. It can also include whether the symptoms disappear with rest.
Pain quality: This is a patient description of pain. The question may end openly ("Can you describe it for me?") Or lead. Ideally, this would create a description of the patient's pain: whether it is sharp, dull, crushing, burning, tearing, or other feelings, along with patterns, such as intermittent, constant, or throbbing.
Territory and radiation: Where the pain is in the body and whether it radiates (elongates) or moves to another area. This may provide an indication for conditions such as myocardial infarction, which can spread through the jaw and arms. Other referred pain may provide clues to the underlying medical cause.
Severity: Pain score (usually on a scale of 0 to 10). Zero is not a pain and ten is the worst pain. It can be comparative (like "... compared to the worst pain you've ever experienced") or imaginative ("... compared to your arm being snatched away by an alien"). If the pain is compared to previous events, the nature of the event may be a follow-up question. Clinicians must decide whether a given score is realistic in their experience - for example, a pain score of 10 for stiff toes tends to be exaggerated. It can also be assessed for pain now, compared to pain at the time of onset, or pain as it moves. There is an alternative assessment method for pain, which can be used where patients can not voice a score. One such method is Wong-Baker facing the scale of pain.
Time (history): How long has the condition occurred and how it has changed since onset (better, worse, different symptoms), has it ever happened before, whether and how it may have changed since onset, and when the pain stops if now no longer felt.