Exam Intelligence

Well, I didn’t post anything for a while, because I felt it was unfair to do so when I might not even have passed the written Final FRCA part.
But I did.
Now all I have to do is pass the viva voce exam and I’ll be done….hahahaha! Oh how I laugh.
All uphill from here then.
My friend Tasha N. pointed out that having found out you passed the SAQ/MCQ gave you an extra confidence boost that might make you feel “Oh well, I can coast it from here on in”.

NOT the case at all.

I have just spent a few hours sitting with a clinical viva book and going “Yes, but I would anaesthetise him, because I’ve anaesthetised patients like that in real life” and then finding that, actually, the book says “No you jolly well don’t“. Ah. Okay.

Anyway, I think as fellow blogger James S. points out over at Passing the Final, the most important thing is probably to talk lots.

By the way, if you want a nice sieve for differential diagnoses, try this one “VINDICATE“.

Happy revising….

One of the things that came out of the last 7 days spent doing an SAQ and MCQs every day for for a total of about 80 SAQs and about 150 MCQs. One of the benefits has been from marking those SAQs ourselves, against an “ideal answer” sheet.

I actually tried quite hard to give credit for some answers that were difficult to read, but it really was frustrating. And that’s what you want to avoid the examiner feeling to get maximum marks.

Here is a much nicer answer to mark than some of my first attempts.

Note the open spaces, capitalisation and clean underlining of “MANAGEMENT” on the right, and compare with the “Blood glucose” sub-point of “Metabolic derangement” closely followed by the “Malnutrition” sub-heading, and see how different it appears.

For comparison, here is a bad layout in an answer about venous air embolism.

If you want to learn more about how to do this, then you need to go on one of Dr David Gray’s Courses in Liverpool. There is NO substitute for the stress you go through on the course, such that by the time you get to the exam it will worry you less. It is, of course, done in a safe environment, and no trainees came to any physical harm except exhaustion.

Please understand that at the request of the organisers and the time and effort they put in, I can’t put more information about the SAQs or MCQs on this page!

With so many things to read I have been reviving my interest in speed reading. I’m not sure it’s working though, although a computer based test tells me my reading speed has gone from 450 to 660 words a minute.
James Shorthouse has elaborated on my list of topics that might come up, with a few suggestions about what would lend itself to being a good SAQ question.

PS: For the princely sum of £7.86 you too can improve your speed reading by buying a program from here. I bought it for a bit of work distraction, but you can plug your own text into the program to read (so you can learn while you practice!) though you do have to tweak it sometimes in Notepad or Wordpad first if you copy and paste from PDF files. And, okay, it has a bit of a…ahem…naff title (Speed Your Read), but hey…

NB: Price was correct at the time of the original blog entry

Paediatric fluid resuscitation (Article in April
Anaesthesia and an NPSA guideline last year).

Epicardial Pacing (two review articles in March and April
Anaesthesia 2007).

Conscious sedation and dental type anaesthesia (Articles
in Anaesthesia last year).

Complications of head injury (Article in Anaesthesia in
May 2007. Head injuries are quite a common question).

I have rediscovered mindmaps.
As previously mentioned I struggle with categorisation into lists, but after reading the whole thing about MECE it occurred to me that I used mindmaps when I was revising for the primary, so I’ve started using them again.
It’s actually quite a relief to realise that the reason I used them before is because to me they make sense.
If you have no idea what I’m talking about see here. If that doesn’t make sense (it’s a mind map you’re looking at), then see here or here.
Personally I think they work really well for me, and this morning has all been about Cardiac Anaesthesia, including everything to do with CPB, post-op management and complications. I couldn’t quite fit it all onto one page of A4, but I could have managed it on a sheet of A3 I think.
And that’s with my normal sized writing.