Pathophysiology Clinical medicine is an applied science depending on knowledge of pathophysiology. There are advantages and disadvantages to different approaches to understanding patient problems. This is a tipoff that the clinician is employing pattern recognition, and this is often an important starting point in understanding patient problems. There is comfort in pattern recognition, since it allows you to name the disease.
Pattern recognition has many limits as an approach to patient problems, however.
It requires a broader range of experience than most young clinicians possess. Pattern recognition works if you have been able to compulsively memorize lists of symptom complexes. This is pretty boring work, however, which often ignores the pathophysiology which ties the symptom complex together. Unfortunately, not all patients have read your books, and they may have part of, but not all of the symptom complex, a confusing problem if you rely on pattern recognition. Finally, many diseases remain unnamed and can only be understood by ability to approach the patient by clinical reasoning.