How To Properly Use Bullet Points In Your Step 2 CS Patient Note

Without an excellent Patient Note you won’t achieve your full potential on the CS Exam, that’s just a fact.  A great Patient Note is essential for top CS marks, so let’s take a look at one of the most common questions we get from our CS students.

Bullets or paragraph?

This is a common question and the truth is that both are accepted and both can yield a great HPI… Let’s focus on the key to success with the bullet point format since that is often where students tend to mess up. 

Bullet points allow you to quickly and easily transfer info from your case note into your PN, but you need to recognize that they aren’t meant to be a shortcut, they aren’t meant to be used to create a bare-bones patient note. 

A big mistake students make when using bullet points is not painting a good enough picture of the scenario at hand. This usually occurs when a bullet point is used for 1-2 words only, when in fact it should still contain complete info.

For example, a non-radiating left-sided headache that is throbbing doesn’t look great when written like this: “ – L side throbbing HA no radiation”. It does look a lot better when written like this: “Headache located on the left side of the head, – Described as throbbing, – Non-radiating”. 

You don’t need a ton of information, but don’t use bullet points to write as little as possible. Writing a complete phrase is preferred to writing one or two words. Remember that your goal when writing the HPI in your PN is to paint a picture of the chief complaint.

So remember, if you want to use bullet points on your CS patient note, shift your idea of them from being a way to do less work to the idea of them being an effective tool to better organize the information you gathered from the interview.

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