This is a most basic skill and starts when the medical provider first looks at the patient. Whatis being inspected is color (yellow for jaundice, red for inflammation), swelling, alignment (ormisalignment), gait (the way a patient walks) and the motion of the joints. 

this is the skill of listening to the sounds that the body makes such as the sounds of thebeating heart, the lungs moving air in and out, the bowel passing material through during the digestiveprocess and even the noise madeby moving joints and tendons. Usually a stethoscope is used for this 

With this skill the hands are used to feel areas of the body to find tenderness, swelling andsize 

by using a finger to tap a finger of the other hand a sound isproduced. The sound producedis determined by what is beneath the area being “percussed”. By carefully listening for the difference inthe sound, the size, location and character of the underlying organs can be discovered.