Don’t worry… I’m not going to present a case here!
Case presentation… This is a page which, I’m sure, will have a place in every medico’s diary! This is something over which we would have given enough thought during our clinical years.
To the non-medicos out there, case presentation is nothing but we’ll be given a patient, we’ll have to ask his history, examine him and come to a diagnosis and then present it to a professor. Sounds simple, right?! But it isn’t so! Why?! That’s what this post is about. Read on…
The case presentation part of the clinical life is never going to be easy. The problem lies not just on one point, but on a variety of factors, which makes the probability of you screwing your presentation near infinity (I know that the maximum probability of an incident is 1. But let me tell you, case presentation is beyond the limits of mathematics).
The difficulty in a case presentation starts from us. First of all, the fear in students is the most important factor. We are scared that we would go wrong in our presentation. And that obviously poses serious troubles when you are about to present a case, standing in a special location in the hall, in front of the professor and 50 students. And of course, it goes without saying, we go wrong in the examination part. Examining a patient doesn’t just have few/some/many/too many/way too many rules. It has loads50 of rules and even more exceptions! Here again the probability of missing out on relevant point shoots up.
Okay, if you get through all this and if you are one person who can fly solo, hold on… You have the professors and the patient himself to make things worse! However, I don’t blame them!
The professor is there to teach us, to correct our mistakes. But because of our clumsy presentation he/she ends up only correcting us. Sometimes we start feeling if the professors are there only to point out the mistakes in the presentation. And some corrections will be pointless. But you will have to stand in front of them, not to have a nervous look on you face and correct your presentation even if you are sure that the book says otherwise. Here comes the most important problem, “What is right? What is wrong? Should you add this point in you presentation or not?!”. This is because, there are instances when the text book is wrong and the professor corrects it. But it’s not the same with another professor. He/she might want to go with the textbook. So, it is upto the student to decide which to follow, and how to present, depending on the professor. Most of the time, we won’t know what a professor will be expecting. So, no doubt we are going to go wrong in presenting!
If you had been wondering how the patient will be a problem, here comes… Most of the time the patient gives different histories to the student and the professor. There have been a lot of incidences where the student presents that the patient has some particular complaints and when the professor asks the patient, he/she comes up with a few more complaints (which, with our ill luck, will be vital details taking us closer to the diagnosis!), the professor stares at the student presenting the case and he/she looks helplessly at his/her classmates who will be giggling at their dismal friend by then!
Whatever, case presentations are meant to be a learning process. You are allowed to make mistakes (but only as long as you are ready to correct them and learn quickly). When you are about to begin your presentation, you will feel that you are going to end up as an epitome of embarrassment, but by the end you will have only climbed two rungs on the ladder of your self-confidence and four rungs on your ladder of knowledge!
Case presentation is definitely a thrilling experience with some pit holes, rugged terrain and a saccharine destination!
