Doctor In The House?

[malkeet]

lol tips...erm i dunno what its like at other unis, but at bham the exams are pretty much the same as the previous years so just ask people in the year above what they rembmeber has come up.

For osces i just read the examinations inside out, and practised on my family..or on my pillow. try to see as many signs as u can whilst your at hospital too. oo get friendly with SHO's, this one SHO told me what station i was gonna have in my january osce last year whilst i was waiting to do my osce :lol: cholecystitis wahoo! shame the patient was sick like 6times during it!

[Shaheed_Fauja]

How nice a mini medics get together - I'm a 3rd year :lol:

btw wicked warrior I had this impression you were a schoool kid but nice. Which hopital are you in??

LOL hawww that ent nicee wicked warrior a safe dudee!

Also anyone got any tips??? Things like what you would have done differently in medschool, and erm OSCE's cos I tend to make the mos obvious mistake in exams...

what he used 2 tell me was this:

Either work ur chitttar off during the week and relax weekends

or work in weekends and relax weekdays

both ways u need 2 work! lol

I didnt do that in 1st year - got awway with it but now im gna actually do what he said

[rimmel]

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[Wicked Warrior]

what he used 2 tell me was this:

Either work ur chitttar off during the week and relax weekends

or work in weekends and relax weekdays

both ways u need 2 work! lol

I didnt do that in 1st year - got awway with it but now im gna actually do what he said

Yeah that was good advice I gave. Wish someone had told me it when I first started.

OSCE-wise depends on when you do it. We had third year OSCEs but they're more about communication.

Final year OSCEs - we had so many different things but they all tend to repeat year after year.

We had:

- breaking bad news (telling pt's wife her husband was gonna die and it was gonna be soon)

- post-mortem - gaining permission to do a post-mortem

- headache - taking a history and diagnosing either SAH or meningitis (depending on which group you were in)

- CXR interpretation (pt had pneumothorax and got asked types and causes)

- opthalmology - diabetic/hypertensive eye

- post-natal depression

- taking a sexual history from a man (who turns out to be homosexual)

- thyroid exam

- respiratory exam (copd)

- resus

- alcohol abuse history

- paediatric head injury history taking

- venesection

- writing a drug chart

Can't remember the other 2 stations we had.

It's all about showing the examiner that you are a safe doctor. Misdiagnosing the meningitis as say migraine is really bad and you will fail. Taking blood from a dummy arm is easy and it doesn't matter if you can't do it. What matters is that you confirm it's the right patient using 3 items of identification. Stuff like that.

Books I used were Surgical Finals: Passing the clinical and Medical Finals:passing the clinical. Go through them and make sure you can do a complete exam of the relevant system. The books also have typical scenarios used in OSCEs and what things you need to say/do. Practise the scenarios with three people - 1 person the patient, 1 the student and 1 the examiner who has the book.

Practise all the systems on patients in hospital - you need to look like you've done the same examination five times a day, every day for the past five years! Doing it on a real patient with another student writing down what you've missed out helps you improve.

The more you practise, the smoother you get, the better it looks.

Don't knock it either - I had to do a proper thyroid/neck exam on a patient who thought he could feel his glands swelling up. They were normal and there was nothing to find, but if there was, he would have had to stay in hospital for longer.

ECGs - I have to preclerk patients which means take history, do a quick exam and make sure they are fit for surgery. Every patient over 50 has an ECG and they don't have barn-door ECGs either. Can't always tell whether there really is ST-elevation or it just looks like it. Is that atrial fibrillation or just the patient not keeping still during the ECG? That's how it gets, so the more ECGs you see and can interpret, the better. Don't worry about not being able to analyse it in five seconds - I still can't do that yet.

Imaging - CT scans I used to have difficulty with but make sure you can interpret all kinds of imaging: X-rays (can be CXR, AXR, bone, skull, KUB etc), CT scans, IVUs - all of them.

At the mo, working down in Royal Bournemouth. Nice place, nice friendly staff.

[rimmel]

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[Wicked Warrior]

Yeah that was good advice I gave. Wish someone had told me it when

aww I wish I had someone to help me out like that. My medic dad told me to chill and go out....and I listened to him like a good daughter... :lol: I know this sounds funny but even tho i am in third yr I really dunno how to work nd I'm always having failing problems - so far I have been doing that at the end of every yr so I'm kinda just dying to pass first time cos then I can have my first summer holliday since 2003....

Also thanks for the OSCE advice - btw we probably do have communication skills but from what I know they have actors and who pretend to be pts and you do stuff like cranial nerves, thyroid gland examination, abdomen examination at each of the 15 stations...

Do you reckon I should use Kumar and Clark or the books you said? Also I start my firm tommorrow and I really dunno how I should approach things...

The books I mentioned are for OSCE finals really - they're overkill for anything else.

Stick to K&C as your main bible. Like I wrote above, do some work either at the weekend or during the week. At least do something.

In third year, you're mainly concerned with the pathophysiology of diseasa and less about the management (which is more important for finals). So at the mo, you should looking at say why do ulcers occur and the difference between arterial and venous ulcers. Make a list of subjects and a list of topics for each subject, starting with the firm you're working on first. If you start on say lower GI firm, then make a list of the possible lower GI topics ranging from HNPCC to appendicitis. I've always found it easier to break things down into headings like Definition, Aetiology, Epidemiology, Clinical Features, Pathophysiology, Investigations, Management.

I also tried to make each disease fit on to either 1 or 2 sides of A4 so it made it easier to revise, and aim to do 1-2 diseases per day depending on how big/small they are.

Having made your notes earlier makes it easier to revise when it comes to exams.

[TuhiNirankar]

"taking a sexual history from a man (who turns out to be homosexual)"

that must of been akward :lol:

[nanosecond]

oh i thought that was the only interesting thing in medicine........ :lol:

[SATORi]

ok so whats the question? sorry if i missed it, skipped a lot of posts...