The SOAP approach is a documentation technique employed by health care providers
when writing notes in a patient’s chart and the admission note among other common formats.
SOAP is an acronym for subjective, objective, assessment, and plan (Pearce et al., 2016). The
subjective component of SOAP features elements such as chief complaint (CC), history of
present illness (HPI), history, and review of symptoms. The objective component of SOAP
features the details observed or measured by the health care provider from the patient’s current
presentation (Pearce et al., 2016). Such details include vital signs, findings from physical
examinations, psychological status, discomfort, and pain. The assessment component features
information such as possible etiologies and progress from the last visit (Pearce et al., 2016). Plan
is the fourth and last component of SOAP entails what a health care provider will do to treat the
patient (Pearce et al., 2016). It may include further tests, referrals, or performing medical
procedures on the patient among others. The SOAP approach

SOAP notes are so prevalent among physicians that using an EHR equipped with SOAP note template creation is almost unquestionable. The best-designed EHRs combine form and narrative-based functions to create note-taking capabilities that allow you to rapidly drag and drop symptoms as well as input data manually. Read more

There are two types of health history namely; comprehensive and focused. A
comprehensive health history is the collection of detailed information concerning a patient
including their personal situation, biographical data, family history, medical history, and present
health status (Ingram, 2017). The main aim of taking a comprehensive health history is to obtain
important knowledge about the patient to facilitate a therapeutic relationship between the patient
and nurse (Ingram, 2017). A focused health history on the other hand refers to recording one
main complaint of the patient in history of present illness then relating the information to other
parts of history (Kale, Shinde, & Patil, 2019). A comprehensive health history is required during
prescriptions while a focused health history is required during outpatient and emergency
services. The SOAP approach