OSCEs for Medical Finals 2013 PDF
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Preface
Few will disagree that the recent overhauls in medical training, together with higher numbers of medical students being trained, has made medicine far more competitive than before. Medical students today have to make definitive career choices much earlier on than they would have had in years gone by, and to start building a portfolio of achievements such as audits and publications very early on at medical school. Time has become even more precious than it was before, and it is understandable that medical students today will opt for concise focused textbooks rather than sprawling prosaic texts, some of which have been used over many generations and gained an almost legendary status.
This book is perhaps unique in that it has been written by a group of doctors who range from those in career-grade posts who have completed postgraduate training and have been OSCE examiners themselves, to those who have very recently sat their finals. We have collated our experiences to create a textbook that we have made as focused, easy to read and, above all, as exam-orientated as possible. While doing this, we have worked hard to ensure that we include everything necessary not only to pass finals, but also to achieve excellent marks and hopefully merits and distinctions.
The structure is based on four sections – clinical examinations, histories, communication skills and procedures. At the beginning of each of these sections, there is a ‘Top Tips’ page that has generic advice for any OSCE station of that section which would help you boost your marks and performance regardless of what the station is.
Each section is divided into chapters based on the stations we feel are most likely to appear in OSCEs at medical schools. Practice makes perfect – and more so in OSCEs than in any other form of assessment. That is why we have started each chapter with a checklist of items reflecting the areas you are likely to be marked on. You should use these to perfect and consolidate your routines, and also when practising OSCEs with friends and on patients. You should ideally do this in a pair or a group of three, with one student doing the station as a candidate and one allocating mock ‘marks’ using the checklists to assess the candidate’s performance.
Following this in each section, we have included tables that summarise the most common conditions that are likely to present in finals OSCEs. We have ensured that the information on the conditions in these tables is as focused and exam-oriented as possible. There is also a ‘Hints and tips for the exam’ section in which we have summarised key advice and common pitfalls that finalists tend to make.
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