In the Thick of It

We are in the middle of our final exams period, and, as expected, it is quite full-on. These are basically several sets of comprehensive examinations covering everything that we have learned at medical school since starting on the course, and so the topics are understandably really vast. It’s so difficult to even begin to prepare for these exams and I think that everyone has basically just been reading and covering anything and everything that they can, and practicing our examinations all the time, in the hopes that any work is good and useful work – and by and large it seems to be.

By now we have already had our OSCEs (Objective Structured Clinical Examinations) and sat our written papers, and we just have our OSLERs (long cases) to go – more on those below! In previous phases, our exams have consisted of fifteen OSCE stations, and 180 marks each for SAQ (short-answer) and MCQ (multiple-choice) papers. But this time we only had 10 OSCE stations and 150 marks for the MCQ paper (although the SAQ paper was the same 180 marks). It has been really tiring so far, and I’m glad that we have the rest of the week to relax/recover from these exams, especially the written ones – as looking after our mental health is a very high priority at this stage.

Without giving away any information on the actual content of the exams, I can say that the people setting them up did a very good job to ensure that they have all been very comprehensive and that many aspects of the Specialist Clinical Placement blocks that we had in Phase III were covered adequately. We weren’t tested on everything, of course, but there was a sufficient amount represented from various different aspects of our medical syllabus to feel like it wasn’t too concentrated in any one area. Whilst OSCEs seemed to cover more adequately the clinical side of medicine (these are the common, everyday tasks that F1s and beyond will have to do in hospital), the written papers tested our book knowledge about lots of different conditions, as is expected.

It seems like we are all old pros at sitting written papers and at doing OSCEs, since we’ve all done a few rounds of each, but the OSLERs (Objective Structure Long Examination Record) are a new kettle of fish for all of us. We’ve had several practice OSLERs (some more realistic than others) since clinicals started at the beginning of 2016, but this is of course a different scenario – among other things, we are being examined with a real, live patient instead of an actor. And there are other components to the OSLERs as well that we’ve not yet encountered before in the exam setting – having a mini-viva where we are asked about the presenting condition, having to explain a medical procedure to the patient, etc. – so it will be interesting to see how it goes. Hopefully the next time I post, I will be on the other side from all of these exams – wish me luck!

Joshua Galvin : 22 Feb 2018 15:23 |  Tags: John Mbchb Student Warwick Wms |  Comments (0) |  Report a problem