Abstract
Background
Neck lumps are a common clinical presentation in both primary care, the emergency
department and in specialist clinics. Foundation doctors and final year medical students
are often not confident in the assessment of patients presenting with head and neck
symptoms. We evaluated medical students confidence in performing a systematic neck
lump examination, formulation of differential diagnosis and presentation to senior
colleagues.
Methods
An online survey was completed by 185 medical students across two English Universities;
122 (66.0%) students were from University A and 63 (34.0%) students were from University
B. Students were in their third-fifth year of medical school.
Results
98.4% (n=182) of participants reported receiving formal teaching of neck lump examination
during medical school for the. 66.0% (n=122) of medical students were confident in
examining a neck lump but 62.4% (n=115) were not confident in presenting examination
findings to a senior colleague. 78.4% (n= 145) and 64.8% (n=120) did not feel confident
in generating a list of differential diagnoses for a patient with an anterior or posterior
neck lump respectively.
Conclusion
Despite being able to examine neck lumps, medical students did not feel confident
in presenting their examination findings or proposing differential diagnoses. This
may be due to superficial understanding and poor knowledge translation into clinical
practice. Use of a lymphadenopathy simulator, the teaching of common malignancies
and corresponding head and neck lymph node drainage may improve diagnostic reasoning
and aid early detection of cancer and other conditions.
Keywords
Abbreviations:
OMFS (Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery), ENT (Ear Nose and Throat), GP (General Practice)To read this article in full you will need to make a payment
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Article Info
Publication History
Published online: February 17, 2022
Accepted:
February 11,
2022
Publication stage
In Press Corrected ProofIdentification
Copyright
© 2022 The British Association of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
