Wednesday 7 July 2010

Temptations

For the first time ever I have my OSCE towards the end of the 2 weeks of OSCE exams. In the past I've always had my exams near the beginning.

This leaves me with a moral dilemma.

Should I ask people who've already done the exam what they've had? The majority of my year group seem to think this is definitely the way forward. I'm not so sure.

Firstly there's guilt. How would I feel getting a mark that I know might only be better than a friend's because I was more prepared for a certain station?

Secondly, OSCEs change. surely over the space of 2 weeks they will change the stations they examine us on. We're lucky to pretty much know every station that is going to come up, so regardless of what a friend has had I'm still going to have to make sure I'm safe and learn every station just in case in come up.

Thirdly, what if I get myself in a muddle? It's all too easy to listen to what other people found in exams. "My patient had a kidney transplant..." Would this make me just go into an abdo exam focusing on looking for a transplanted kidney? Would I forget to check other things? What if it wasn't the person with the kidney after all? Surely if I just examined properly I would be able to find out what's wrong for myself.

So because of this I am going to buck the trend and avoid everyone who's already done their exams talking about it. I don't want to know the stations and I don't want to know what patients they had. I'm just going to spend my time learning what to do for the stations and making sure I do it properly.

Lily xXx

2 comments:

Dr Jr said...

Wow.

Our OSCEs changed between the morning and afternoon sessions! I somehow doubt yours will be similar to your colleagues' OSCE!

Lily said...

You'd be surprised, ours are pretty similar, probably because there's a limited number of stations we can have, but also as there are a limited number of patients to examine...

Each set of OSCEs tends to be different, but only slightly so.