The 4 sentence surgery presentation
1st sentence: Name, age, post op day X from Y procedure, for reason Z.
2nd sentence: Relevant 24 hour events.
3rd sentence: Vital signs (”hemodynamically stable” if you don’t want to list everything), physical exam (tailored to specialty), significant lab values (and the trend direction, up or down). This may not be one sentence but you need to make it fit in the time of one sentence, especially if the senior/attending is losing interest fast.
4th sentence: The plan. Why are they still in the hospital and what do you want to do to move them towards going home?
I made this post 3 years ago as a medical student trying to figure out how to do better on my rotations and gosh dang it is still a really good outline. I sucked at presentations for a long time - my tongue would get all tied up, I would get flustered. Now I do this without thinking much of it. My advice for not getting flustered would be to just think of it as passing along the most relevant information. Because that is all it is, really.
