As a medical student you’ll be asked again and again “Tell me about *insert disease/syndrome here*”. How do you go about answering the question? How do you buy enough time to start thinking of a sensible way of getting all the masses of information you have in there, out?
When I was at medical school, I was taught “In A Surgeon’s Gown…..”
| Mnemonic | Topic | Description |
|---|---|---|
| In | Incidence | How common is the disease? Rare, uncommon, common, endemic. |
| A | Age | Who get's the disease? Older people? Younger people? Everyone? |
| Surgeon's | Sex | What is the male to female ratio? Or is it only found in men or women? |
| Gown | Geography | Is it a disease more common in certain parts of the world? Or more common in certain ethnicities? |
| Physicians | Predisposing Factors | What risk factors are there, both genetic, and environmental |
| May | Macropathology | What can we clinicians see when we examine the patient? |
| Make | Micropathology | What do the tests show? Imaging, blood tests, diagnostic tests, histopathology etc |
| Some | Symptoms and signs | What the patient feels, and what the clinicians can elicit from the patient. |
| Timid | Treatment | How do we treat the disorder, if at all |
| Progress | Prognosis | What are the short term, and long term outcomes of the disorder? |
OK, so I’ll admit it’s not a perfect system, as it’s mainly designed for surgical diagnoses, but next time someone asks you about a disease, diagnosis, disorder; try using it, and see if it helps. You might be surprised….
