Medical Quizzes Help Sharpen Skills

Are there other nurses out there who enjoy the challenge of making diagnoses? It seems I can’t pass up an opportunity to attempt solutions to medical puzzles. A few seasons back, a news magazine show on TV (Dateline, I think) ran a series of episodes in which three case studies were presented each week.

The cases weren’t presented in sequence, as in case #1 in its entirety, then case #2, followed by case #3. Instead, there was a brief lead-in to case #1, after which four choices of diagnoses were flashed on the screen and the viewer was asked to select one. Then, the show moved on in the same fashion to case #2 and, finally, to case #3. During the course of the hour-long show, each case was revisited twice more, with further details of the case presented each time. Again, at the end of each short segment, the four choices of diagnoses were displayed onscreen and the viewer was asked, again, to choose a diagnosis. So, I, the viewer was given the opportunity, based on the additional information presented, to have a change of mind or stick with my original assessment. I really got into that show and had a surprising record of accuracy.

I say surprising because I haven’t worked in a clinical setting for many years and don’t take official continuing education courses. I do read a number of publications and gather quite a lot of information online but I know my skills are rusty since I don’t have the benefit of constant immersion and reinforcement.

One trick I used when watching the TV show was to state a diagnosis even before the choices were flashed on the screen. If my preliminary diagnosis showed up as one of the four choices offered, I most often stuck with it—successfully. You know that old saw: go with your first instinct.

I receive regular e-mails from Medscape CME and last week’s mailing offered the opportunity to make diagnoses of five case studies. I made correct diagnoses of four of the five cases, three of which were somewhat obscure conditions. The answer in the fifth case involved reading a CT scan, something at which I am not adept.

I see value in taking the time to give thought to these medical mysteries for a few reasons. One, these exercises just plain get the old cranial wheels turning. Then, I am forced to consider the evidence: symptoms, treatments that haven’t solved the problem and diagnostic tests. I always learn something and a lot of it actually sticks with me.

I recommend that even nurses who are in a clinical setting every workday take a stab at responding to these little quizzes. They are fun, it doesn’t take long, doing so will take you outside your medical specialty box and no one will know if you answer incorrectly.

Who enjoys these tests the way I do? Don’t you, too, find them beneficial?