SCA practice case · Telephone consultation
“The teacher’s phone call”
Telephone consultation
Child patient
Someone else speaking
Hard
Children & young peopleHealth disadvantage & vulnerabilitiesProfessional & ethical dilemmas
The candidate brief
This is what you would read in the 3-minute window before the patient connects. Read it once, note two or three hypotheses and one thing you must not miss, then stop.
Patient
Tyler Brooks · 8 years · male
Setting
Telephone — school safeguarding lead calling about a registered patient.
Past history
- Asthma
- Sibling registered (HV involvement)
Medication
- Asthma inhalers (review overdue)
Allergies
NKDA
Recent notes
⚠ 2 asthma reviews not attended. A&E 6 weeks ago: arm pain, “fell off bunk bed”. HV note (sibling): mother’s new partner moved in.
Reason for contact
Call-back to school safeguarding lead, Mrs Angela Reeve, about Tyler.
Practise this case
The full case is in the Hot Seat with the Gold plan. You get a 12-minute timer, a role-player script with facts released only when asked, examiner checkpoints by the three RCGP domains, a model consultation and the guidance behind it.
What this case tests
Show the learning points (spoiler: read after you have practised)
A third-party safeguarding call runs on three rails at once: information flows IN freely (and the GP’s own records — the implausible A&E story, the DNAs, the HV note — corroborate); confidentiality flows OUT only as safeguarding lawfully requires; and duties never transfer — the DSL refers, the practice refers in parallel, neither waits. The hidden agenda is the caller’s: social entanglement and an "informal" school culture have paralysed her for two weeks, and the consultation’s real work is converting her own sentence into her own referral, today, without shame.
The guidance behind it
Similar SCA cases
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