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."