Raising awareness among health professionals is a key mission for Beat SCAD and SCAD patient Louise Pearson has recently been educating medical students at the Royal Derby Hospital, Nottingham University School of Medicine.
Louise was one of four volunteers who took part in an education session for first-year students at the Medical School. The session gives students experience in taking medical histories, learning how to ask open and closed questions, showing empathy while retaining the information to feed back to the group for constructive criticism.
Louise talked about her ‘event’ to four groups of about 12 students and their tutors, without saying that it was SCAD. After her medical history had been taken, the students gave their diagnoses, which included Pulmonary Embolism, angina and an asthma-related attack. Louise then revealed to the group that she had actually had a SCAD.
She said: “There were some very shocked reactions and immediately all the pens were busy making notes!”
The group discussed the reasons Louise’s symptoms pointed to a heart attack and “on some occasions they picked up on how the medics ruled out a heart attack too early in my case”.
She added: “It’s one of the most thrilling experiences to tell the tutors too, because they are usually unaware of SCAD. I did this process four times, so informed around 45 students, half the yearly intake.”
Louise also handed out our SCAD for health professionals leaflet, so the students had a reminder of the unusual case they had tried to diagnose.
Well done and a big thanks to Louise for informing the doctors of the future!
