Critical thinking and prioritisation is paramount in our
daily anaesthetic lives, and is one of the things that is
being tested when we are invited for viva voce exams. It
is, of course, also tested in the SAQ and to a certain
extent the MCQ as well. Our answers should be prioritised
to present those things which are most important, most
common or most life-threatening first. No zebras outside
the windows when we hear hoofbeats!
One way of practicing critical thinking and prioritisation
is to try and answer viva questions with only five
critical words (key words). You can try doing this for
either a big topic or a subsection of a question when you
are practicing. Obviously you will need a friend, and an
ideal answer or example of a very good answer laid out in
front of you.
By practicing this Five Word Viva Game, when it comes to
the real thing you will have an advantage. It will help
your exam technique in several ways.
Firstly, when you practice it will make you think very
carefully about anything you DO know about the topic, and
you will formulate an answer which at least gives an
overview. One of the most difficult things to do in the
exam is to get away from waffle. You start answering a
question and then end up using lots of filler words, which
take up time, but don't go anywhere near answering the
question. Suddenly the bell goes, and ooops… By
summarising down to five important key words you have
automatically got the main points in your head, you are
more likely to say those than waffle, and you can get away
with using filler words a bit more (but should still try
and avoid anything which is not relevant).
Secondly, if you don't know anything about the topic when
your…friend…asks you the really difficult question
about immunoglobulins, when you go off and read about it,
and then try and figure out "What are my five key points I
need to get across for answering a viva question on this?"
then you have to process the information you have read.
This makes your brain form associations using that
information. You "intra-integrate", so to speak, the
information within itself, and you also "extra-integrate"
with information you already know and have thought about.
This means that you are more likely to remember it at
another time, and will actually allow you to trigger off
more information at another time.
An example of five words:
Q:Tell me a little bit about the immune system.
A:Innate, acquired, lymphocytes, antibodies, complement.
Q:Tell me a little bit about the innate immune system.
A:Barrier (skin/secretions), non-specific, phagocytosis,
cytotoxic, cytokines
Q:Tell me a little bit about acquired immunity.
A:(Previous) exposure, lymphocytes (B&T), antibodies
(ADGEM), specific, T-helper
So hopefully you see what I mean.
Now obviously it doesn't have to be five words, it could
three or seven, but five is a nice number, and three is
really too few for some of the topics. The point is, that
you aim to slim down to key words. Better yet if you can
associate those key words with key images, but I'll talk
about that another time.
