Guidelines for writing a case report

A case report should be detailed and analytical. Your analytical voice should be clear, so don't just copy and paste information from other sources. Follow the outline shown here.

Make sure you show us what you have learned about case solving, the biology you learned in the process, and what your reasoning was in solving the case.

Also turn in your record keeping sheets along with your report. It's ok if they are a bit messy. We just want to see how well you are doing at organizing this information and if there are any suggestions we can make that could help your analysis next time.

Title

1. Summary of the case as it was presented. This can be a close paraphrase of what you received, but integrate thoughts or questions you had as you read it.
   
   
2. What is your final diagnosis? Explain a bit about what the diagnosis means (is it caused by an organism? toxin? or are there any environmental factors that might influence the condition? or not?). If your top diagnosis differed from your team's, mention that here and say you will explain the differences in your reasoning that led to this conclusion.
   
   
3. List ALL the diagnoses you considered (even those you discarded quickly), and after each indicate your reasons for considering it (which evidence were you given or did you discover that suggested each of these diagnoses?).
   
   
4. Explain what evidence led you to reject or make less likely all of the diagnoses except the one you think is correct.  Some of these answers may be very short (like an answer to a life style question you asked); some may be more detailed like results of a particular test that was done.  In each case, give a reference to the source of your information (patient information, particular book, test result we gave you, etc.). Be sure your evidence was convincing and you are confident it is sufficient to reject the diagnosis.
   
   When you present test results, give numbers (with units) and explain how those results helped you in your analysis.
   
   
5. What was the final confirmatory evidence that made you confident about your final diagnosis?
   
   
6. Tell us a lot about what you now understand about the biology you learned about the final diagnosis and one of the other conditions you examined (e.g., if you were considering anemia, what is anemia and how it might have caused the symptoms and led to the test results). This will undoubtably require you to look again at a Human Biology or Human Physiology text or one of the texts in our room or on reserve in the library.
   
   
7. What questions do you have about this case that you wish you understood a little better (or a lot better)? We value questions and will try to respond either on your paper or we'll collect ones that are on similar topics and respond to them in a class time. If you think you don't have any questions at all, you haven't been thinking about this enough.
   
   
8. List of references you cited (be sure each on is cited at least once in your text).  At least half of these should be text (not web) references.
   
   Include for each reference the names of the authors or editors of the book, the name of the book or article, publisher, year of publication, page numbers where you found the info. 
   
   If it was a research article, just put an indication of the first and last page numbers of the article.
   
   If it was a web site, include more information than just the URL (title of the page, title of the web site, name of person or organization responsible for it, date of last update--or date you read it).
   For future writing we'll give you standard formats to use, but for now, tell us as much as possible about the source.