Surgery & perioperative · History + examination

Right lower abdominal pain - Emergency Department

EasyYear 4 · Curtin style · 15 min + 2 min reading · 5 tasks

2 min reading · 15 min station · reminders at 2 min

Station - Instructions for candidate

You are a medical student on placement in the Emergency Department at Fiona Stanley Hospital.

Hao Zhang, a 20-year-old man, presents to the Emergency Department with 18 hours of abdominal pain that began around the umbilicus and is now in the right lower abdomen. He has had reduced appetite and one episode of vomiting.

Your tasks are to:

  1. Take a focused history.
  2. Perform a focused examination.
  3. Request any relevant investigations and interpret the results provided.
  4. State your most likely diagnosis and differential diagnoses to the examiner.
  5. Outline your initial management plan to the examiner.
  • You do NOT need to summarise your findings to the examiner.
  • Please verbalise your examination to the examiner; findings will be provided on request.
  • You do not need to write prescriptions or obtain consent for a procedure.

This is a 15-minute station, with 2 minutes of reading time.

Ask the examiner

Say what you would examine or request, the way you would in the station. Nothing is named until you ask for it.

Whatever the examiner recognises is revealed below. Or pick a numbered item to reveal it blind.

Investigations

Ask for a category the way you would in the station: “Can I have the obs and a set of bloods?”

Examination

Say what you would examine and how; the examiner reports what you would find.