Hi, everyone! I am Kaai, a 4th medical student at Gifu University.

I challenged the practice of a medical interview with Ns.Rossi for the first time, so let me share my experience a bit here.

This time I was given the scenario which was,

49 years old woman with possible sleep aponia. Her husband noticed that she sometimes stops her breathing during her sleep, but she isn’t aware of it. She is a marathon runner so physically very fit and well. She has had some episodes of bradycardia of around 40-50 bpm.She frequently feels very tired, that she has not had enough sleep and is often very sleepy during the day.

First, I had no idea how to start a conversation.Eventually, I started introducing myself to the patient. What do you guess happened next??

Yes, I totally forgot asking the patient’s name and went straight to the conversation related to her main complaint…

Every feedback from Ns.Rossi and other participants pointed this out.

After asking some questions to the patient, I was directly thinking about obstructive sleep apnoea syndrome or central sleep apneasyndrome because I had no idea of another disease due to my poor knowledge.  

At that point, I should have considered more possible diseases. Otherwise, it leads to awrong diagnosis and treatment.

Moreover, I said, “I suggest you take some imaging exams such as brain CT and MRI just in case you have a brain tumour etc.”  I believed that doctors are supposed to tell everything they think to their patients. From this lesson, I turned my belief out to be incorrectalthough they should sometimes be open all up.If doctors tell everything including the possible worst scenario (in this case, brain malignant tumour), this just makes patients more anxious.

I have more to say about my downsides, but I can say there was also a good point which is that I didn’t be afraid of making mistakes.

My first try was not perfect, but it means there are a lot of points to improve.

All I have to do from now on is get more medical knowledge and practise more medical interviews.

I put down 4 main important things I learned this time below.

–Check a patient’s name to avoid an identification error.

–Do casual conversation first. Whatever you ask could be a clue.

–Consider many possibilities in order not to make a wrong answer.

–Do not make patients anxious.

If you are interested in this project, we all welcome your participation!
Thank you for reading! Hope to see you again soon:)