Devora Schapiro

Emergency Medicine: Site Visit Summary

For Emergency medicine both site evaluations were in person with the site evaluator. The first one was with a classmate who I was with on rotation, and the second one was me alone with the evaluator. In each site evaluation I presented a patient. In my first visit I presented a case of a woman who presented to the ED with cough and shortness of breath, she was eventually diagnosed with interstitial pneumonia. I presented this case because even though this woman was young and generally healthy she required admission due to her vital signs, I liked that this case taught me the importance of treating the patient how they present, although history is really important, recognizing when a patient is actually sick is key

At the second site evaluation I presented two cases. The first was on a young girl with dizziness. I presented this case because it taught me the importance of taking a really good history. Dizziness has a very large differential diagnosis. When I asked the patient specific questions I was able to narrow down some causes of her dizziness. For instance when I asked her about her last menstrual period I found that she had been having abnormal vaginal bleeding every day for three months.

The third case I presented was of a woman who presented with palpitations and her ECG showed SVT. I chose this case because it was really interesting to see something I learned about in the didactic year in the clinical year. This patient was converted back to normal sinus rhythm using vagal maneuvers.

It was interesting to see the different cases my classmate presented, because I was able to learn from her cases. For example she presented a case about a headache after trauma, and I did not see a similar case in my time on the rotation so it was interesting to learn from her.