1 Before you use it
What it is
Five criteria, all of which must be absent to clear the neck clinically. No midline cervical tenderness · no focal neurological deficit · normal alertness · no intoxication · no painful distracting injury.
Any one present → image.
When to reach for it
Any traumatic neck presentation — as the quick screen, or beside the Canadian rule as the reasoning exercise.
"Painful distracting injury" is the criterion that carries the judgement, and it is worth asking a student to define it out loud before they use it.
2 Giving it
Scoring
Not scored. It is a checklist, and it is deliberately simpler than the Canadian C-Spine Rule — five yes/no items with no ordering and no range testing.
What it doesn’t measure
Anything about ongoing function, or about cervical arterial dysfunction. Screen those separately.
3 Reading the score
Interpreting it
A sensitive rule-out. No verified accuracy figure is carried in our library and none is printed here.
The honest teaching point is the comparison. NEXUS is faster and needs no movement; the Canadian C-Spine Rule is more structured and asks the patient to rotate. They do not always agree on the same patient, and knowing that is more useful to a student than memorising either one.
Is the change real?
Student trap. Recording "alert" without checking, and calling a sore shoulder a distracting injury when it isn't. Both criteria are judgement calls, and both get waved through.
Official source: trauma.reach.vic.gov.au. We don't host the form.
This is a learning tool. It does not diagnose patients and does not replace your clinical educator.
Did this page do its job?
CliniStudy is in beta. One tap is enough — it decides what gets fixed first.