Oh, ho ho. Today was…interesting.

Station One: Chest Drains
I did resonably well as I realised that it was a chest drain I was being asked to insert. Other people thought it was a thermometer, a needle, a reflex-testing mallet, or – in one case – a catheter. So far, so good. But then when asked where I would insert it, the examiner’s response was ‘Well, you’ve just pierced his heart and killed him’. Which I thought was a little harsh, a simple ‘No’ would really have sufficed. I got all the stuff on pleural effusions right, though, so it didn’t go too badly.

Station Two: Headache
This basically involved getting a case history from a patient, which I felt went reasonably well, but I did managed to knock my ID badge off half way through the interview. The invigilator obviously though I was having some kind of a fit, since she came up to me (interrupting the interview) with a glass of water and told to to calm down, and that everything would be OK. So maybe I didn’t do as well as I’d thought.

Station Three: Spleen Examination
This was unfortunate. I hadn’t looked in any detail at how to do this, as you usually can’t feel someone’s spleen, so I didn’t think it’d come up in the exam. Oops. Firstly, I should have got him to lay down on a bed. Which I didn’t. And then I should have done the examination properly, which I also didn’t, though I did do some poking about, so may have got some marks. The examiner then started her questions, such as why would the spleen be enlarged, which I didn’t know. So that final station was a bit of a disaster really.

So overall, today didn’t seem to go particularly fantastically. But it’s tomorrow I’m dreading the most, with the non-clinical OSCEs!

Originally posted on The LBSC