Diagnosing Wrist Pain for New Nurse Practitioners

clinical topics orthopedics Apr 27, 2021
An image of a woman pointing on her wrist with a text Wrist in white font color and the text Pain in black font color all in a yellow background.

⭐️ CME Opportunity for this video below ⭐️

Wrist pain is a SUPER common chief complaint in primary care. Most of the time, luckily, it’s chronic wrist pain that’s from overuse (versus the more acute, dangerous differential diagnoses with injuries), but it’s still a lot to work through as a new nurse practitioner.

Diagnosing Wrist Pain in Primary Care

In this week’s video, I’m covering the overview approach to diagnosing wrist pain in primary care for new nurse practitioners:

  ✅ What first triage questions to ask

  ✅ Red flags to watch out for

  ✅ History questions, physical exams and special tests to perform

  ✅ When to refer and when to consider getting imaging

(FYI: to slow down the audio speed, hit the gear symbol in the bottom right corner and change it to .75x or .5x. Closed captions are also located at the bottom R-hand corner of the video.)

NOTE ABOUT IMAGING - there's no specific link, I didn't have my notes in front of me so I didn't want to misspeak-- but what I said was correct in the video-- initial imaging for wrist pain includes posteroanterior (PA), lateral, and oblique views of the wrist!

Resources mentioned in this episode:

  • For further imaging guidance, this is a popular resource, but please note it's from a private company. You can verify further imaging on the American College of Radiology (ACR) website as well.  

🎉 CME opportunity available for this video!

Here's how it works:

1. Click on this CME link: https://earnc.me/teFyI0 Sign up for $10 for this video episode.

2. Answer 2 reflective “nudges” AKA questions about what you learned and how it applies to your practice

3. Earn 1 hour of AMA PRA Category 1 CME credit! You can download your credits when you’re ready to use them (applicable for AANP, ANCC, and NCCPA certifications!) 

This is a 3-month pilot program to see if this is something that would serve our nurse practitioners and physician associates going forward! To learn more about how you can access these CME opportunities, go to: https://info.cmefy.com 

The CME experience for The Real World NP Podcast, Youtube Channel, and Blog posts is powered by CMEfy - a seamless way for busy clinician learners to discover Internet Point-of-Care Learning opportunities that reward AMA PRA Category 1 Credit(s).™ Learn more at http://about.cmefy.com/cme-info


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