Surgery & perioperative · History + examination

Iron deficiency anaemia and swallowing difficulty - Surgical outpatient clinic

HardYear 5 · 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 an intern on placement in the general surgical outpatient clinic at Fiona Stanley Hospital.

Stanislaw Kowalczyk, a 71-year-old retired shearer, has been referred to the general surgical outpatient clinic after iron deficiency anaemia was found on pre-operative blood tests for a planned knee replacement. He says he feels well and has attended to discuss the abnormal blood result.

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. Summarise your findings to the examiner with your most likely diagnosis and differential diagnoses.
  5. Outline your initial management plan to the examiner.
  • Please verbalise your examination to the examiner; findings will be provided on request.
  • You do not need to perform a procedure or prescribe in the clinic today.

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.