Chapter 4: Diseases and Conditions of the Endocrine System
Assignment: For each scenario that follows, explain how and why you would schedule an appointment or suggest a referral based on the patient’s reported symptoms. Be sure to first review the “Guidelines for Patient-Screening Exercises” found on page iii in the Introduction section of your Workbook. A male patient calls for an appointment. He reports experiencing the sudden onset of excessive thirst and urination. He says that he is thirsty all the time and cannot seem to get enough to drink. How do you respond to this phone call? This patient suffering from a sudden urge to drink fluids as well as excessive urination is a sign of polydipsia. What polydipsia means is excessive thirst and a way one may have this condition is to have diabetes mellitus, which means there is an excessive amount of glucose in a persons blood which travels in the bloodstream and increases the symptoms that this patient is experiences ("Polydipsia," 2008). In this case, the patient needs to be seen right away to be evaluated by their physician.
A female patient calls the office and says she thinks she has swelling in her neck and is beginning to experience difficulty swallowing. How do you respond to this phone call?
When the female patient called, she was on the phone talking about her neck swelling and how it was difficult to swallow things. In this case, I would schedule an appointment for a physical because she may be suffering from simple goiter which means her thyroid glands are enlarged and I would advise her not to worry because it won't be cancerous but her medical history should be reviewed and see if there is any reason for this to be happening or if it just came out of no where (Dugdale, 2012).
An individual calls the office stating he is experiencing periods of rapid heartbeat and palpitations, insomnia, nervousness, and excitability. He states that