Medicine · History + examination

Weight loss and palpitations - 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 an intern on placement in a busy general practice in Perth.

Li Zhang, a 64-year-old aged care worker, has booked to see you about six weeks of increasing palpitations and a feeling that she cannot tolerate heat like she used to. She has noticed she is losing weight despite eating normally. Her sister mentioned that her neck looks swollen. The practice manager notes she appears anxious and is sweating.

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. Explain your provisional diagnosis to the patient.
  5. Outline your initial management plan to the patient.
  • Please verbalise your examination to the examiner; findings will be provided on request.

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.