One of the things I personally have most problems with is the concept of “Classify Or Die”, that is, you should break your answer down into specific categories, so that it is more intelligible, and gives the impression, at least, that you have a way of thinking about things. I can grasp the concept, but sometimes I struggle to break things down into appropriate categories. This doesn’t mean I can’t answer the question, because I can get the information across in a suitable way, but it doesn’t look as splendidly tidy as that of some other people. (Interestingly, a friend and I sat down and compared our answers to past papers. We had the same information, but my friend’s answers looked a lot neater on the page. Why? Simply put because the answer was classified and tabulated neatly, whereas mine just appeared to be a series of sentences put together.).
For example:
Q:What are the causes of muscle weakness in an intensive care patient?
A:
- Treatable causes
- Non-treatble causes
Q: How might you provide nutrition for a patient on intensive care?
A:
- Parenteral nutrition
- Enteral nutrition
One concept of managing your categorisation is a concept called “MECE”, which is an abbreviation for “Mutually Exclusive, Collectively Exhaustive”. The concept is best explained here and here. Obviously it’s not the only way of doing it, but it’s one way.
