Quadrant Map and the Sequence That Protects Your Findings
The abdomen is the one region where the order changes: you inspect, then auscultate, then percuss, then palpate. Click a quadrant to learn what lies beneath it, localize real presentations to a quadrant, build the examination sequence yourself and watch what happens when you palpate first, set the room up, and sort pain into visceral, parietal and referred.
The map you speak in
Two imaginary lines through the umbilicus — one from xiphoid to symphysis pubis, one horizontal. Choose a region to see what lies beneath it. The patient’s right is on your left.
Click a region below, or click the diagram.
Nine regions, four quadrants. You chart in quadrants; imaging and provider notes use the nine regions (epigastric, umbilical, hypogastric or suprapubic down the midline; right and left hypochondriac, lumbar and inguinal on the sides). Read both, speak in quadrants.
Localize it
Read the presentation and choose the region where you would expect the finding. Location plus organ equals hypothesis.
Presentation
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Correct
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Answered
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Build the sequence
Choose the region, then click the four steps in the order you would perform them. This is the most commonly missed sequence on licensure examinations and at the bedside.
First
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Second
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Third
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Fourth
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Say it out loud on the way into the room.Inspect, auscultate, percuss, palpate. Then two more rules that follow from it: examine the painful quadrant last, and if you test for rebound at all, test it at the very end — it hurts and it makes every finding after it uninterpretable.
Set the room up
Select every action that belongs in the set-up for an abdominal examination, then check. Some of the choices below actively manufacture false findings.
What kind of pain is this?
Quality maps onto anatomy. Read the description and classify it — the answer changes what you look for and how fast you move.