What best defines subjective information in a patient assessment?

• A. What you see during the examination
• B. Location
• C. What the patient feels
• D. Review of systems

Answer: (C)

Subjective information is the patient’s own report of what they feel or experience. It includes symptoms like pain, dizziness, fatigue, or nausea—descriptions that can’t be measured directly by the clinician and must come from the patient’s perspective. This is why describing “what the patient feels” best defines subjective data. In contrast, what you observe or measure during the exam is objective data, and a review of systems is a structured way to collect subjective information, not the data itself.