MSK & orthopaedics · Examination

Shoulder pain reaching overhead - General practice

EasyYear 4 · Curtin style · 10 min + 2 min reading · 3 tasks

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

Station - Instructions for candidate

You are a medical student on placement in a general practice.

Yiannis Papadopoulos, a 61-year-old self-employed house painter, has asked for this appointment about a six-month problem with the right shoulder that has been getting worse. There has been no fall or injury.

Your tasks are to:

  1. Perform a focused examination.
  2. Summarise your findings to the examiner with your most likely diagnosis and differential diagnoses.
  3. Outline your initial management plan to the examiner.
  • You do NOT need to take a formal history; brief clarifying questions are allowed.
  • 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.