These were okay, very hard in parts, but overall not bad. And now I’ve finished the exams. Hooray!

Multiple choice: The second of three exams – and the hardest so far, by far. It was very difficult, and there were an awful lot of questions where I didn’t understand the question and had never heard of any of the answers. So it was somewhat difficult to choose the right one. But there were a few questions that seemed alright, so maybe I’ll have passed overall. I guess I’ll just have to wait and see.

My first exam – It wasn’t so bad – it was quite long though, at forty-odd pages, and there were a few questions that I didn’t even begin to understand. All-in-all, though, not too bad at all.

The coming week is Exam Week once again. As is now traditional, I will comment on each exam I sit so that you have some idea how I’m getting on, and to give me an opportunity to vent my spleen. I’m quite nervous about these exams, as I’m very unsure of the kind of questions that’ll be asked, and hence unsure of whether or not I will know the answers. But I suppose we’ll see how I get on. I have one exam on each of Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday. So I’ll let you know what happens as I go along.

I can happily report that I’ve passed my first year of medicine with two satisfactory grades and one merit.

Hooray for me.

Originally posted on The LBSC

Much celebration here in Stockton! I have no viva, which means that I’ve either passed or completely failed the year. Given that I’ve done well in all the assignments, it’s pretty unlikely that I’ll be the person (there’s usually only one or two) who’s failed.

So I’ve almost certainly passed, so I’m off out to celebrate (at 8.15am, which seems strangely exciting).

Yey.

Originally posted on The LBSC

It wasn’t fantastic, it wasn’t too bad either.

But it WAS the last exam. Hooray. Other than one or two small commitments, I’m now off for four months, till October. Provided I’ve passed, of course.

This makes me understandably happy.

Originally posted on The LBSC

Another day, another exam…

It appears that I spoke to soon. Today, I faced the legendry Bus Timetable question (“Study the following bus timetable, and work out the best route for Mr Smith to get from home to the hospital”). I don’t really understand the relevance of it, but by the time you’d gone through the follow-on questions (“What would be the most reliable way to communicate this information to Mr Smith?” and “What should you check before giving him this information?”), it racked up ten marks. Which is a surprisingly large number.

Anatomy, however, was pants. I guessed a good two thirds of the questions. It was impossible. But as it’s only worth 30 marks, I’m not too worried. That’s only a few more than the bus question.

I’m sure you’ll be manically depressed in your realisation that there is no exam tomorrow, as I have the day off, and so I won’t be able to regail you with my tales of woe. However, they will be back with a vengence on Friday, following the Multi-choice paper.

Now I’m off down the pub.

Originally posted on The LBSC

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

Today’s exam wasn’t quite as bad as I’d expected, thanks to the fact that it was largely waffle-based rather than knowledge-based. There were some questions that I completely guessed on (guesses which, as it happens, appear to have been completely wrong) and there were some fairly weird questions (“What would you say to a patient in order to elicit their concerns?”, “You arrive at a community organisation to do voluntary work, and the staff and other volunteers are all busy with clients. Describe six different courses of action you could take.”).

Nothing on the weirdness scale that last year’s cohort received though: “Study the following bus timetable, and work out the best route for Mr Smith to get from home to the hospital”.

So all in all, my first 41 pages (!) of exams have gone reasonably well. One down, three to go.

Originally posted on The LBSC