The Last Push

Last week was one of the most stressful weeks of my academic life, but I can now say that clinical finals are over!

My exams were on Tuesday afternoon and Thursday afternoon. I had wanted to get them over with as quickly as possible, so of course I ended up in the last possible session! The morning before each exam went so slowly, and I sat in the house trying to relax but watching the clock from waking up at 6am to leaving the house at 12.

Arriving at the hospital before the exams, it was obvious that everyone was nervous. There were sandwiches and cakes for us, but they didn't get touched until afterwards. After a briefing, we were led to a corridor where we all sat outside our individually allocated room. A bell rang, and we entered the room.

From then we had 15 minutes to take a history and examine a patient, which is quite tight on time. The 30 seconds it took for the examiners to introduce themselves and shake my hand seemed to take forever, but the rest of the time flew by. After that another bell went, and we left the room to think for 15 minutes and produce a management plan. Then it's back into the room for 15 minutes of presenting the patient and getting grilled.

Everyone says that these exams are like your driving test, with, “inspection, palpation, percussion, auscultation,” (or lookin’, touchin’, hittin’ and listenin as I remember it), as the equivalent of, “mirror, signal, manoeuvre.” The examiners aren’t expecting a perfect display of skills. They just want to know that you are safe and that you know the limits of your own practice.

Having said that, as lots of people will remember from their driving tests, when under pressure it isn’t always that easy to perform as well as you’d like! After 2 cases, I felt physically and mentally drained. It wasn't like any exam that I've had before. Although I now know that I did enough to pass, at the time I felt like I could only remember about 60% of the stuff that I’d revised.

The thing that was most interesting in the exams was that most of the patients had clinical signs to find. We spend hours as students trying to seek out just such patients, but so many of them are well in the community that the only times they attend hospital are for the occasional clinic and to help out with exams! A lot of us saw some signs for the first time in finals, and it took a lot of effort not to be too enthusiastic and excited about them during the exam!

Over 4 days 170 students saw 4 patients each. That's a lot of patients, and I think it's incredibly kind of these people to give up a whole day of their time to let us talk to them and prod and poke them to show that we will make safe doctors. I imagine that it's almost as tiring for them as it is for us, but they continue to come and help year on year. It's a timely and important reminder of the respect and trust that people have in the medical profession.

Megan Earle : 15 May 2015 13:38 |  Tags: Finals Mbchb Sarah Student Warwick Wms |  Comments (0) |  Report a problem