Quantifying palpation techniques in relation to performance in a clinical prostate exam

Abstract--This paper seeks to quantify finger palpation techniques in the prostate clinical exam, determine their relationship with performance in detecting abnormalities, and differentiate the tendencies of nurse practitioner students and resident physicians. One issue with the digital rectal examination (DRE) is that performance in detecting abnormalities varies greatly and agreement between examiners is low. The utilization of particular palpation techniques may be one way to improve clinician ability. Based on past qualitative instruction, this paper algorithmically defines a set of palpation techniques for the DRE, i.e., global finger movement (GFM), local finger movement (LFM), and average intentional finger pressure, and utilizes a custom-built simulator to analyze finger movements in an experiment with two groups: 18 nurse practitioner students and 16 resident physicians. Although technique utilization varied, some elements clearly impacted performance. For example, those utili...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2010
• Where: TITB
• Authors: Ninghuan Wang, Gregory J. Gerling, Reba Moyer Childress, Marcus L. Martin
• Keywords: Education, Finger Movements, Nurse Practitioner Students, Palpation Techniques, TITB 2010