Headache Elective
Headache is one of the most common complaints in general practice. It will be valuable for primary care physicians and/or trainees to gain experience in this field to provide the optimal care for their patients.
Residents will see patients with the chief complaint of headaches at the John Kreeft headache clinic at Victoria hospital under the supervision of a faculty member (Headache specialist – Dr. Lik Hang Tommy Chan). Clinic days are on Wednesday and Friday (8am-5pm). During each clinic day, the rotating resident will evaluate between 4 to 6 new patients. Evaluations may occur in conjunction with the attending or independently. Each patient will be discussed in detail in regard to a working diagnosis, plan for further evaluation, treatment and follow-up. No on-call requirement.
Objectives:
- Differentiate between primary and secondary headaches
- Develop an approach to taking a headache history
- Determine when a referral to a specialist is appropriate
- Determine when to proceed with investigations such as brain imaging
- Recognize the most common primary headache types
- Understand the basic approach to the management of common headache types, such as abortive and preventive treatment for migraine, tension type headache, medication overuse headache, concussion and etc.
Evaluation:
Residents will be evaluated by the fulltime faculty attendings working with the resident in the Headache and General Neurology clinics.
Please contact Karla DeVries for further information on arranging this horizontal elective: Karla.DeVries@lhsc.on.ca.
