In this section you should set out the lessons that can be learned from this case, and also identify any questions that the case raises. It is not your duty to provide a complete physiological explanation for everything that you observed. This is usually impossible. Nor should you feel obligated to list or generate all of the possible hypotheses that might explain the course of the patient’s condition. If there is a well established item of physiology or pathology which illuminates the case, certainly include it, but remember that what you are writing is primarily a clinical chronicle, not a basic scientific paper.

Because students and field practitioners are often out of their depth with basic scientific discussions, their writing appears to lack commitment. In fact, sometimes they almost overtly state, "I don't really know what I am talking about." This is done with hedging statements and the excessive use of modal verbs. Click on the link below for a short discussion of those troublesome modal verbs, and be sure that in your discussions you are not using them to draw attention to what you don't know.

At this point you may be struck by how short your discussion seems. Often we have a sense of imbalance between a hefty introduction and the more concise conclusion to a case study. Resist the urge to transplant background material from the introduction into the discussion. The discussion is about what we have learned, not about what we should have known before we embarked on our writing.

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