This week we completed our clinical practicum, which has been going on for the past month. We had to diagnose a patient given some case information and a ten minute consultation. This was one of my favorite activities we've done in this class.
With the first case, we were given very little information. The prior information contained three fairly uninformative sentences. The only big clue we got from it was the patient's unusually high heart rate, which, along with her mood swings, implicated the amygdala and the limbic system.
During our interview, we concluded that she had normal sensory function in her right arm. She seemed to have trouble remembering numbers, but could speak clearly and write fine. This suggested that the problem was localized to one hemisphere of her brain. Given that she could sense on her right side, we determined through a process of elimination that the problem must be in the right hemisphere. We messed up by not testing her sensation on the left side. This showed how the time constraints could be tough to work with.
Given that the patient had no prior history of seizure, we determined that the problem in her right hemisphere was a tumor that had recently begun to manifest adverse effects. The only complication in diagnosis came when we were asked whether the tumor was local or widespread. Luckily, we determined that it was widespread and made the correct diagnosis.
We suggested that she get more brain scans to determine the exact location of the tumor and whether or not it would possible to operate.
This activity really tested whether we had internalized all the information we learned in our class. I enjoyed having to think about information I normally reiterate on a test in new and challenging ways.