Merry Christmas from twitfrg!

I hope everyone enjoys their Christmas break (if you all get one!) and twitfrg will restart with notes being posted on 7th Jan, and discussion on 10th Jan.

If you would like to write revision notes or get involved next year, please get in touch! And if you've used our revision notes this year, please take 2 minutes to fill in this quick survey to tell us what you think so we can improve them!

Survey link: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/M73NY95


Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

The twitfrg team

Revision notes

I've created a survey so we can get some feedback on what everyone thinks about the revision notes. Please take part and let us know your thoughts. The survey can be found here in the sidebar to the right of this post.

Guidelines for Writing Revision Notes

• Submit all notes by email to twitfrg@gmail.com
• Deadline is 5pm on the SUNDAY BEFORE the discussion week (e.g. W/C 17th Dec, Submission would be by 5pm on 16th Dec)
• Notes must be written in Microsoft Word, size 12 Arial font, no more than 2 A4 pages of text
• Please focus on either a general overview of the topic or a particular aspect (e.g. Diagnosis and management of obstetric cholestasis when the topic is "The approach to the itchy pregnant patient") [and please let me know which of these you are doing!]
• Please appropriately reference your work as necessary (Harvard or Vancouver referencing)
• Please make sure any images used are referenced properly
• Please let me know how you would like to be referenced when I put your notes on the blog (e.g. Faye Bishton, Norwich Medical School, University of East Anglia; or Faye, @twitfrg, Final Year Medical Student)
• Use whatever formatting you prefer (provided it is readable!) - tables, images, mind maps, or whatever else. The more variety, the better!

This week's case: LOC

Hi all - Thom here.

I'll be leading this week's case discussion on loss of consciousness (from the @twitfrg account). I thought I'd just outline the structure I'm planning to follow so we can get the most out of the discussion. This week's notes cover the basics of initial assessment. I've kept them brief as there are so many routes to go down, but figured you can look things up as appropriate for areas where you feel you need to. For the case, you may want to look at management of seizures. Maybe.

DOCTORS - I will ask for your input at appropriate points so you can contribute too, should you wish to!

And remember, ANYONE is welcome to join in!

LOC case

1. Presenting complaint and initial assessment - tweet what you would do first to stabilise patient
2. History & other clues
3. Causes of this episode
4. Examination
5. Impression and investigations
6. Clinical decision making - I'll tweet questions for consideration
7. SJT-style questions - I thought we could end with a couple of ethical questions in an SJT style if we get time (and if I can think of some!)

Ch ch changes!

Following a few discussions on twitter, it seems that by defining a topic each week, and basing the case on that, we're missing a really vital learning point - how to work out what the diagnosis is, based purely on presentation. After all, patients won't tell you they're an endocrine patient, and neither will you get told this in finals!

So, from next week (19th November onwards), instead of being "neurology" or "trauma" weeks, the weeks' topics will become "An approach to the patient with...."to try and help us all think outside specific systems, and learn the presentations of a variety of conditions. Fingers crossed this is another step to improving twitfrg!