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Case Presentation Skills

Rationale

Communicating patient care information to colleagues and other health professionals is an essential skill regardless of specialty. Internists have traditionally given special attention to case presentation skills because of the comprehensive nature of patient evaluations and the various settings in which internal medicine is practiced. Students should develop facility with different types of case presentation: written and oral, new patient and follow-up, inpatient and outpatient.

Prerequisite

Basic written and oral case presentation skills, obtained in physical diagnosis courses.

Specific Learning Objectives

  1. Knowledge: Each student should be able to describe:
    1. components of comprehensive and abbreviated case presentations (oral and written) and the settings appropriate for each.
  2. Skills: Each student should be able to:
    1. prepare legible, comprehensive, and focused new patient workups that include the following features as clinically appropriate:
      1. present illness organized chronologically, without repetition, omission, or extraneous information.
      2. a comprehensive physical examination with detail pertinent to the patient’s problem.
      3. a succinct and, where appropriate, unified list of all problems identified in the history and physical examination.
      4. a differential diagnosis for each problem (appropriate to level of training).
      5. a diagnosis/treatment plan for each problem (appropriate to level of training).
    2. orally present a new patient’s case in a logical manner, chronologically developing the present illness, summarizing the pertinent positive and negative findings as well as the differential diagnosis and plans for further testing and treatment.
    3. orally present a follow-up patient’s case, in a focused, problem-based manner that includes pertinent new findings and diagnostic and treatment plans.
    4. select the appropriate mode of presentation that is pertinent to the clinical situation.
  3. Attitudes: Each student should:
    1. demonstrate a commitment to improving case presentation skills by regularly seeking feedback on presentations.
      accurately and objectively record and present data.