Mental health · History + examination

Shaking two days after stopping drinking - Hospital ward

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 covering the orthopaedic ward of a metropolitan hospital in Perth. It is 10 am.

Salvatore Mancini, 49, is for theatre tomorrow. Nursing staff have asked you to review the patient, who is shaky and sweaty. The notes are on your sheet.

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.
  • The right wrist is in a backslab; you do not need to examine it.
  • 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.

After treatment

Once you have acted, ask how the patient has responded.