Ethics & Communication — Prometric Style Questions, Set 2

What this deck covers

Ethics and Communication – Prometric Style Questions, Set 2 in 50 board-style clinical cases with worked explanations. Each case gives you a clinical vignette, four options, the correct answer, and an explanation of why each of the other three is wrong, with the guideline or textbook it follows named on the answer.

Board-style teaching questions for paediatricians and trainees preparing for board, MRCPCH and Prometric examinations. Written from published guidelines and standard paediatric textbooks, with the source named on every answer.

The 50 cases, in order

1. Signed, but not understood
2. Putting a number on it
3. Raised voices in the corridor
4. Talking over the patient
5. Something they found online
6. Asking that nobody be told
7. Nobody to ask, no time to wait
8. Brought in by grandmother
9. When agreement is impossible
10. Understanding but unable to weigh
11. A refusal that would be fatal
12. The boy who offered to help
13. Asked not to tell her
14. Something else in the cupboard
15. Who may examine her
16. A photograph on a phone
17. No name, but recognisable
18. Looking up a colleague
19. Asking for the whole file
20. Putting right what was written
21. One child, one large budget
22. The last bed available
23. An offer from a company
24. A courtesy to colleagues
25. Deciding before the shortage
26. Ten times the dose, no harm
27. An account he disputes
28. A death nobody expected
29. Afraid of what she writes
30. As far as it looked
31. Asked to do what she cannot
32. Nobody came to look
33. A friend who should go home
34. Belittled in front of everyone
35. Eighteen hours and counting
36. After the baby died
37. The boy who said no
38. Declining the heel prick
39. A result he cannot unlearn
40. Before the first incision
41. What the plan does not change
42. The dose that controls the pain
43. Two conversations, kept apart
44. Where he would rather be
45. She wants to talk about it
46. A duty that overrides consent
47. Saying no to the schedule
48. One room, two claims
49. Making it a condition of work
50. Who gets it if it works

Diagnoses and management options tested

Across the fifty cases you are asked to choose between options such as: Understanding was never checked, Wait until a parent can be found and asked to sign, A parent’s consent, Identifiable data shared without safeguards, Provide it to her, Which child arrived at the hospital first, Likelihood of benefit, decided in advance, Report to the coroner and begin a child death review, Attempt it, since a consultant has instructed her to, Because it may lead to the trainee leaving her post, Yes, because his parents have given valid consent, Share the information only with the child’s school.

Clinical pearls from this deck

• Ask them to explain it back to you. ‘Any questions?’ is a question that gets the same answer whether they understood or not.
• One in a hundred and one per cent are the same number and not the same message. Say the one people can picture.
• Sit down and stop talking. Most corridor anger ends the moment somebody senior listens without defending anything.
• Ask the child first, even at nine. What she says next is often the thing the parent never knew.
• Ask what made them look it up. The answer is usually a fear you can address, and the treatment stops mattering.
• Ask how old her partner is. Competence answers the consent question; that answer decides whether it is a safeguarding one too.

Work through the deck once for recognition, then again a week later to test yourself — each question gives the answer and explains why every other option fails.

More from this system: all ethics and communication case decks · pediatric reference values.