The Spine module started off on Monday 3rd Of March. The mornings start at 8am with a handover of the local team admissions and reviews and students are welcome to participate in the discussions. Then we moved to 2 Bed ward rounds on selected cases picked the previous day for a deep dive into history taking and clinical exams, which each student takes turns examining clinical signs at bed side. We then moved to the classroom to start lectures, mostly talks in the morning and practical stations in the afternoon.
Topics covered over the week include basics of History Taking and Spine physical exams trauma cervical spine and lower spines, infections, degenerative conditions and paediatric spine conditions and their management (detail timetable attached). The practical stations include history taking scenario (Dr and Patient), students partner to carry out spine examination, dura repair exercise on water filled ballons, setting up skull traction, laminectomy and pedicle screws and posterior lumbar fusion on sawbones.
We were able to see a good number of patients with spine trauma admitted in the ward that provided an opportunity for demonstrating clinical signs. The spine module ended on Friday 8 March with an assessment exam. Because of the cyclone in Queensland, Drs Ben and Alpesh had to leave early on Thursday via Fiji and we adjusted our sessions to accommodate the change. Dr Mich and Cheung were able to continue to the end.
