Surgery & perioperative · History + examination

Blocked waterworks and heavy legs for a week - Emergency Department

HardYear 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 in the Emergency Department of Royal Perth Hospital.

Terry Falzon, a 66-year-old retired fitter and turner, has come in because his waterworks have packed up again over the last two days. He has had waterworks trouble for years and takes a tablet for it, and he has had two weeks of bad back and leg pain for which his GP prescribed strong pain tablets.

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.