So today I had a mock / real exam of sorts which was painful, because its always difficult to hear how you need to improve, but excellent at the same time because we don’t get a lot of chances to *do* mock exams. The Royal College exam in Internal Medicine has both an oral and written component; however, the oral component is the one which requires a lot of practice because of what’s required in such a short amount of time.

They give you a stem (essentially the clinical scenario), and you’re either required to walk through exactly how you would manage the patient, examine the patient, or communicate with the patient (with standardized patients, i.e. “mock patients”). The time frame is 10 minutes.

In many ways, its as much a test of how you can preform under a time-limited stressful situation, and as a means of how you can perform what you need to do while looking graceful, organized and co-ordinated as well. For that reason, its important for us that we not only know our Stuff, but be able to show that we know our Stuff …

… which is why doing mock exams are actually quite good.

The best scenario of the day, today?

“Examine this patient for an overactive thyroid. But don’t examine the thyroid itself. And … go.”