During the last week my son participated in the examinations for the Royal Australian College of Paediatricians.
Samuel’s role is as a patient for the doctors doing their final exams in order to become qualified Paediatricians.
Part of the examination process is a review of the patients history and an assessment of their current needs and medical issues. When we entered the room to speak with the examiners prior to the first candidate we were confronted with the pile of papers in the picture above.
This pile represents four years of medical history since Samuel’s accident.
Examining your life (or a part of it)
The examiners spend around 40 minutes with the patient getting an overall history, doing a physical examination and then exploring a range of questions around the current issues and most pressing needs of the patient.
When the examination candidate doctors come in they have an hour to repeat the process.
An expert has 2/3 rds the amount of time as a relative novice to determine what the most important points in this history are, what the most pressing needs are and to think about a plan for how to deal with those needs.
As mentioned that photo represents four years of medical history…. but that is only part of the overall picture of Samuel’s life.
What are the important points?
If an expert or a novice was given the opportunity to spend 40 mins or an hour examining your life (or even a four year slice of it), how big would the pile of papers be that represent that history? In your opinion what would be the most important points.
What questions would you want them to ask you, where would you want them to focus and how would you like them to plan to address these needs?
Think about it and let me know !