Medical Measuring Tools

The medical field has a number of different instruments for examining the human body. Doctors take measurements of people's height, weight, body fat and even blood count or other varieties of measurement. In order to accurately record all of these facts, doctors use a number of different medical measuring tools.

Calipers

• Calipers are used to measure a person's body fat content or percentage. Modern calipers look like a large pair of tweezers; the person's stomach or hip is squeezed between the two far ends. On the side of the calipers is a digital readout that tells the doctor (or the person using the calipers; they're also popular among athletes and trainers) what the person's body fat percentage is. Calipers are useful for tracking a person's fat loss progress, as opposed to just going by their weight.

Scales

• Medical scales are used for a variety of different weighing measurements. For instance, any doctor's office will have a regular floor scale for measuring the weight of patients who come in for a checkup. Hanging scales and digital scales are commonly used in morgues for measuring the weight of organs and dead bodies, as well. Scales are also used for measuring the weights of medication when putting together prescription pills. Scales used in the medical field can be digital or they can be more old-fashioned, spring scales, which use the pressure put on a spring to judge an object's weight.

Measuring Tape

• Because a measuring tape conforms to the body when held taut, tapes are more commonly used in the medical field for taking a patient's measurements. Measuring tapes can be easily pulled around a patient's chest, stomach, bicep or other area of the body that a doctor needs to measure for either growth or loss. Measuring tapes can also be used to measure a patient's height as well as his other dimensions for medical records.