Medicine · History

Sudden severe headache at the gym - Emergency Department

HardYear 5 · Curtin style · 10 min + 2 min reading · 4 tasks

Ready

2 min reading, 10 min station, warning at 2 min

Focus the timer and press Space to start or pause.

Station - Instructions for candidate

You are an intern working in the Emergency Department of a metropolitan hospital in Perth. It is 8 am.

Achol Deng, 44, has driven herself in from the gym with a severe headache that came on about an hour ago. The triage nurse has recorded observations.

Triage note44 F. Severe headache at the gym from 6.30 am. Alert, walking. Category 2.
ObservationsHR 88 /min regular, BP 172/98 mmHg, RR 16 /min, SpO2 98% on room air, T 36.9 degrees C, GCS 15, glucose 5.6 mmol/L

Your tasks are to:

  1. Take a focused history.
  2. Request the investigations you need and justify each. The examiner will provide results where appropriate.
  3. State your most likely diagnosis and the differential diagnoses to the examiner.
  4. Outline your immediate management plan to the examiner, including who you will call, and explain it to Ms Deng.
  • You do NOT need to examine the patient; the examiner will give you the neurological findings if you ask for them.
  • You do NOT need to summarise the history to the examiner.
  • State drug, dose and route where relevant.

This is a 10-minute station, with 2 minutes of reading time.

Ask the examiner

Say what you want out loud, then open it below. Each result stays hidden until you reveal it.

Investigations

Ask for a category the way you would in the station: “Can I have the obs and a set of bloods?”

Examination

Say what you would examine and how; the examiner reports what you would find.

After treatment

Once you have acted, ask how the patient has responded.

Generated by AI for practice; check doses and pathways against eTG / AMH before relying on them.