Top tips: How to do a decent orthopaedic exam in a 15 minute consult

Is it possible to complete a useful, simple, and diagnostic orthopaedic exam evaluation during a standard 15 minute primary care consultation - actually, yes...

Orthopaedic conditions are common in general practice, yet thorough musculoskeletal assessment is often understandably overlooked due to time constraints, or lack of confidence in what you are trying to achieve.

This lecture introduces the concept of a screening orthopaedic exam—a structured, efficient and focused orthopaedic examination that can be performed within a standard 15-minute consult; factoring-in speaking to the client, taking a history, undertaking a screening evaluation, and summarising your findings and plan.

We will explore how this exam fits into the broader diagnostic cycle, helping triage patients into clear outcome pathways: from normal findings and reassurance, to presumptive diagnoses requiring further work-up, to cases of unclear localisation that benefit from early symptomatic therapy and re-evaluation, or those which require more comprehensive work-up.

Using a pragmatic, decision-driven framework, this talk will demonstrate how to extract meaningful clinical information quickly, guide appropriate next steps (including referral or day-case diagnostics), and improve confidence in early-stage musculoskeletal case management.

• Understand the purpose and scope of what is achievable within a 15minute examination - the 'screening orthopaedic exam'.
• To understand the point is to identify or exclude clinically significant orthopaedic concerns, and to differentiate between clear - presumptive, and unclear diagnoses based on screening findings, and determine appropriate next steps for each outcome.
• Understand how to do this well and efficiently, including what to do, how to do it, and what you are looking for.
• To understand how this fits into the wider diagnostic workflow in general practice, including what next steps may look like.