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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   2689 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for April 5, 2024

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Because the test wasn't supposed to be painful, and if he did show his pain, that would be interpreted as an intentional clinical sign by the examinees, who not having access to the script, would then promptly jump to the wrong diagnosis and thus immediately fail the station.

Is that a bad outcome? If the examinees are conducting the test incorrectly such that it caused pain, and then jumping to incorrect conclusions as a result, that is something that will lead to incorrect conclusions when done in the real world on real patients, and deserves to be flunked.

Unless what you mean is that the test "officially" doesn't cause pain despite frequently causing pain in practice even when done correctly, such that the students are not to blame for the inevitable mis-diagnosis because the expected exam answers are flawed.

Kidney palpation is difficult, you have to really dig into it, and there can be spurious confounders, like someone being bruised (maybe they were after a dozen people had done it), too fat, and so on. I've never had much luck with it myself, and you have to go hard to even expect to feel it.

There are certainly clinical exams which are useful and done in reality, but I sincerely hope nobody is making serious decisions off of one, in the absence of other tests. I presume that's what the medical resident knows better than I did, and hence why they took pity on the people desperate to find any hint towards a diagnosis, after all, he was healthy, as an actor he was expected to make shit up and feign pain and discomfort where it's expected, even if he didn't actually feel it.

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