Medicine · History + examination

Fever and low saturations the morning after surgery - Hospital ward

MediumYear 5 · Curtin style · 10 min + 2 min reading · 5 tasks

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

Station - Instructions for candidate

You are an intern on the general surgical ward of a Perth teaching hospital.

Les Harmon, a 66-year-old retired baker, had his gallbladder removed yesterday; the operation was converted from keyhole to open. The nurse has called you because his morning observations show a fever and low oxygen saturations.

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.

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.