MSK & orthopaedics · Examination

Neck pain and stiffness after a collision - Emergency Department

EasyYear 5 · Curtin style · 10 min + 2 min reading · 3 tasks

2 min reading · 10 min station · reminders at 2 min

Station - Instructions for candidate

You are a final-year medical student working in the intern role in the Emergency Department of a Perth metropolitan hospital.

Margaret Thompson, a 27-year-old primary school teacher, presented to the Emergency Department this morning. She was in her car, wearing a seatbelt, when it was hit from behind two days ago, and she has had neck pain and stiffness since; she did not seek care at the time. She has come in today because her school wants written advice before she returns to teaching this week.

Your tasks are to:

  1. Perform a focused examination.
  2. Summarise your findings to the examiner with your provisional diagnosis.
  3. Outline your initial management plan to the examiner.
  • You do not need to take a formal history; ask the patient only what the examination and plan require.
  • Please verbalise your examination to the examiner; findings will be provided on request.

This is a 10-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.