Surgery & perioperative · History + examination

Progressive swallowing difficulty - General practice

MediumYear 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 a final-year medical student on placement in a general practice in Bunbury.

Rosanna Tedesco is a 58-year-old woman attending a Bunbury general practice with an 18-month history of food and drinks sticking behind the lower sternum. She has been referred for assessment of this swallowing problem.

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 prescribe or write in the notes.

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.