| Course | PA 510 Comprehensive Clinical Module Dermatology |
|---|---|
| Week | 2 |
| Paper type | Lesion morphology description |
| Length | About 560 words, 4 pages |
| Format | APA 7 student paper |
| School | Chamberlain University |
| Program | Master of Physician Assistant Studies (MPAS) |
| Updated | October 2026 |
Free sample paper for PA 510 Week 2
Lesion Morphology Description: One Flat-Topped Papule on the Right Wrist of a Patient With Dark Brown Skin, Seen and Felt Separately
Student Name
Chamberlain University
PA 510: Comprehensive Clinical Module Dermatology
Instructor Name
Month Day, Year
Lesion Morphology Description: One Flat-Topped Papule on the Right Wrist of a Patient With Dark Brown Skin, Seen and Felt Separately
The Lesion Chosen
From the eruption described last week, one lesion was chosen for description: an isolated papule on the right volar wrist, about 3 centimeters above the wrist crease, chosen because it was not scratched and not merged with its neighbors. The patient, D.O., drives a forklift on long warehouse shifts and has deep brown skin. Examination was done in daylight from a north window and then under the clinic's white examination light, with a handheld magnifier and a clear millimeter ruler.
The Description
Primary form: papule, a solid, raised lesion less than 1 centimeter across. It stands above the surrounding skin with a flat top rather than a domed one. There is no fluid in it; it does not blanch or flatten under a glass slide, and nothing could be expressed from it.
Size: 4 millimeters at its widest, measured with the clear ruler laid across it, and 3 millimeters at right angles.
Shape and border: polygonal, with four or five straight sides meeting at angles. The border is sharp and can be traced all the way around with a fine pen.
Color: deep violet-gray against the patient's surrounding brown skin, darker than the background. Under the white light, the color looked more purple; in daylight, more gray-brown. Both observations are recorded because the color word changes with the light.
Surface: shiny, catching the light when viewed from the side. With the magnifier and the light low and to one side, fine white crossing lines were visible on the top of the papule, forming a lacy network. No scale, no crust, no erosion.
Seen Against Felt
Seen: everything above about shape, color, border and surface lines.
Felt: on palpation with a gloved fingertip, the papule was firm, not soft or rubbery, and its flat top could be felt as a plateau above the skin. It was not tender. It did not move separately from the skin, which shows it sits within the skin rather than beneath it. The patient reported intense itch at this site, which is a symptom, not a finding, and is recorded as reported.
Secondary Change, and How It Got There
This papule has no secondary change. Nearby papules on the same wrist have small dark crusts where they were scratched, and those are described as crust over excoriation, the result of scratching, not part of the primary lesion. Describing the scratched lesions as the lesion itself would hand a reader the aftermath instead of the thing that came first.
What the Paragraph Will Not Settle
The description does not name the condition. Flat-topped, polygonal, violet papules with a lacy white surface network are the features classically described in lichen planus, where the white lines are called Wickham striae (Le Cleach & Chosidow, 2012), but the same picture can be produced by a lichenoid reaction to a medicine. The description records the features accurately in the glossary's terms (Nast et al., 2016) and leaves the diagnosis to the distribution, the history and, if needed, a biopsy.
References
Le Cleach, L., & Chosidow, O. (2012). Lichen planus. New England Journal of Medicine, 366(8), 723-732. https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJMcp1103641
Nast, A., Griffiths, C. E. M., Hay, R., Sterry, W., & Bolognia, J. L. (2016). The 2016 International League of Dermatological Societies' revised glossary for the description of cutaneous lesions. British Journal of Dermatology, 174(6), 1351-1358. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjd.14419
The Chamberlain PA 510 Week 2 instructions
The second week asks you to describe one lesion, and only one, in standard morphologic terms. Start with the primary form, using a term that commits: whether the lesion is flat or raised and whether it is solid or contains fluid. Give its size with the instrument used. Describe shape and border, then color, then surface changes. Keep secondary changes, such as crust from scratching, separate from the primary lesion and say how they got there. Distinguish what you saw from what you felt on palpation, since claims about firmness or elevation need a fingertip. Avoid sizes measured against household objects. Use an accepted glossary for your terms. Do not name a diagnosis; say what the description cannot settle and which later step will.
Inside the PA 510 Week 2 example
The description picks one papule on the right volar wrist because it is unscratched and separate from its neighbors, and notes the light sources and tools used. The primary form is a papule, raised, solid and flat-topped, with nothing expressed under pressure. It measures 4 by 3 millimeters with a clear ruler. Its shape is polygonal with a sharp, traceable border. Its color is deep violet-gray against brown skin, looking more purple under the clinic lamp and more gray-brown in daylight, and both are recorded. Side lighting and a magnifier show fine white crossing lines on the surface. A separate section records palpation: firm, nontender, moving with the skin. Scratched neighbors are kept apart as crust over excoriation. The final section notes that the features match those classically described in lichen planus but could also come from a drug reaction, and leaves the question open.
Reading the PA 510 Week 2 grading rubric
The largest loss in this week comes from describing the aftermath as the lesion: a reader given only crust and scratch marks has nothing to work back from. Sizing against a pea, a coin or a fingernail is the next most common deduction, since none of those converts into a number another examiner can use. Further points go when the write-up never separates seeing from feeling, so claims about elevation or firmness have no stated source; when color is given as one word without the light it was seen in; and when the description slips into naming a condition. Full credit goes to a description that names the primary form first, measures with a stated tool, traces the border, records color with its conditions, describes surface change and keeps secondary changes and diagnosis separate. Citing a recognized glossary for the terms used is expected.
Common PA 510 Week 2 mistakes, and how to avoid them
Describing one lesion sounds simple, but most first attempts run several lesions together or name the condition by the third sentence. With the image or case from your course in front of us, picking one representative lesion comes first, and we can help you set out the primary form ahead of the rest and phrase size, border, color and surface in standard terms. We can also help you write separate lines for what was seen and what was felt, and describe color with the lighting it was observed under, which matters especially on darker skin. Ending with what the description cannot settle is a step many skip. The description is yours to finalize. Where a template lists fixed boxes, each box gets filled in its own order, with the primary form still leading.
Get a PA-510 Week 2 example written to your instructions
Send your own Week 2 instructions, the morphology rubric row if your classroom publishes one, and whatever image or written case you were issued. A custom description built to those exact fields comes back within 24-48h, the first one free, and it uses the terminology your section has been teaching rather than ours.
More PA 510 papers and MPAS samples
- PA 510 Week 1: Scale Versus Crust Post
- PA 510 Week 3: Distribution Pattern Analysis
- PA 510 Week 4: Clinical Photograph Critique
- PA 510 Week 5: Skin Tone Description Audit
- PA 510 Week 6: Pigmented Lesion Evaluation
- PA 510 Week 7: Biopsy Site Justification
- PA 510 Week 8: Teledermatology Referral Brief
- PA 505 Week 2: MSE Narrative
- PA 504 Week 2: Encounter Opening Script
- PA 503 Week 2: Illness Scripts
- PA 502 Week 2: Bedside Question Brief
PA 510 Week 2 questions, answered
How many descriptive terms is too many?
Enough to fix the lesion and no more. Sections marking morphology on its own row want the primary term, elevation, contents, size, color, border and any surface change, and they want each of them once. Stacking four adjectives on one property reads as hedging, and a marker hunting for a single defensible word tends to find none of them.
The assignment says describe rather than diagnose. Does that rule out condition names entirely?
Usually it rules them out of the description and permits them at the end. The safe arrangement is a description a reader could work from with the last paragraph removed, followed by a short line naming what the features keep in play. Where the instructions bar condition names outright, that closing line gets dropped and nothing else moves.
Our template has fixed fields. Does the order still matter?
The fields decide it, and filling them in the issued order is safer, since markers read straight down the form. Where a field asks for something the material cannot supply, writing that it could not be obtained scores better than leaving the box empty, because a blank reads as an oversight while a stated absence reads as work.
Where can I find a free PA 510 Week 2 sample paper?
You can read a complete PA 510 Week 2 description of one flat-topped papule on a wrist, with seen and felt findings kept apart, on this page.
Why does the PA 510 Week 2 sample record color under two lights?
Because the papule looked more purple under the clinic lamp and more gray-brown in daylight, and recording both keeps the color word honest on darker skin.