Surgery & perioperative · History + examination

Unable to pass water with lower abdominal pain - Emergency Department

EasyYear 4 · 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 the Emergency Department of Fiona Stanley Hospital.

Aldo Petrelli, a 71-year-old retired hairdresser, has come to the Emergency Department because he has not been able to pass urine since early this morning. He has had six months of waterwork troubles. He is uncomfortable but not distressed.

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. State your most likely diagnosis and differential diagnoses to the examiner.
  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 summarise your findings to the examiner.
  • You do not need to consent the patient for a procedure today.

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.