finals
Table of contents
finals
Passed.
Ranked 229/448
6 OSCE Stations passed.
Utter relief.
The Ability to Request and Report Exams
WRISKE (75%) - An exam on your ability to report and request various clinical scans and tests. Preparing to do these tasks under time pressure was good practice. Understanding the five maximum viral antigens to test for in hepatitis, four blood tests in an annual diabetic review and three blood tests in a methotrexate monitor - probably bits of knowledge I should have by now but good to get it wrong now.
The PassMed Grind
Single Best Answer (72%) - After January, it does appear this exam has morphed into managing ‘common tasks’ in the ‘best possible way,’ e.g. recognising the recreational drog causing this toxic picture rather than memorising antidotes. I did feel that completing lots of PassMed and Quesmed helps with recognising patterns but relaying features to pathophysiology would really help provide more confidence in your ‘educated guesses.’ My knowledge of pharmacological management, opthalmology, rheumatology, palliatve care and infectious disease was a bit weak - and truthfully recognisable before the exam - will be good to refresh these over summer.
The Clinical Exams
MOSLER (73%) - Turns out that I can communicate and information gather quite well especially when my histories were more succinct and ICE elicited sooner. Weaknesses were in clinical / diagnostic reasoning and technical skills (examination). So all this really comes down to familiarising yourself with how patients present and recognising features in the history as you go along that you’ll be testing for in your examination. Presenting back findings was also a struggle - that I’m also deliberately trying to improve upon during my SSC too.
Reflections
I’ve realised over these past five months that developing a deep knowledge of conditions, recognising patterns in question banks and trying to be fluent in examinations and presentations is all well and good preparing for. However, it is your ability to build the picture and in the patient that matters - what is your thinking process when going through a history. What hypotheses of the diagnosis are running through your head, what do you need to think about next? You can scheme for 3-5 conditions that you think might come up and hope by patterns alone pick up what is happening but unless you have an ability to think mechanically about why the patient has this and what may have brought this about - you’ll only have just one angle of figuring out why things are happening.
Good lessons to have approaching final year. I still feel like there are lots of areas in improve but thankfully we do have 3.5 months to really build on this for the future.