Medical Student Presentations Video

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CDEM and EMRA released a training video for medical students that demonstrates how to tell a compelling story when presenting a patient’s case. This brief video offers handy do’s and don'ts that will help medical students understand how best to efficiently and effectively communicate in the ED.

 

Patient Presentations in Emergency Medicine

 

 

Presenting a patient can be like telling a story. Much of this is dependent on starting with a good differential diagnosis. As Dr. Gordon says in the video above, there are three parts to this story.

Beginning

☑ Demographics: name, age & gender
☑ Pertinent PMHx only
☑ Reason they are here (chief complaint)

Middle

History
☑ History arranged according to illness script
☑ PMHx, ROS, Soc Hx integrated into narrative

Physical
☑ Vitals: highlight abnormalities (or “unremarkable”)
☑ General Appearance
☑ Physical attributes based on DDx

End

DDx
☑ Most imminent
☑ Most likely
☑ High-risk, do not miss
☑ High-risk, considered but excluded
☑ Low-risk and low probability

Management Plan
☑ Diagnostics
☑ Therapeutics
☑ Disposition

 

The video was designed to illustrate the principles outlined in "The 3-minute emergency medicine medical student presentation: a variation on a theme" by Davenport, Honigman, and Druck (Acad Emerg Med, 2008).

"Oral presentations are a critical element in the communication of medical knowledge between students and faculty, but in most locations, the amount of time spent on teaching the oral presentation is minimal. Furthermore, the standard oral presentation does not work well within the emergency medicine (EM) setting, due to time constraints and the different principles that make EM a unique specialty."