Whether this is worth it for you would depend on the amount of time you have and your clinical experience. If you are a slick talker, charming with good looks, no body odour and well-drilled in your physical examination, you probably do not need any of this. Army boys who have not felt a liver in a long time should get their hands dirty again in the hospital.
The focus of these are:
- To get you to speak in a polished manner
- To practise putting yourself in the hot seat
- To brush up your physical examination skills
Typically, exam steps that people falter at are:
Examination of salivary glands
Vascular examination
Certain orthopaedics examinations (e.g. shoulder)
If you are not confident in the above, read some books and get a registrar to guide you along. Most of the current registrars are trained for the much more gruelling Part 3 examination and the answering style is different. You guide the examiners to talk about what you are good at but this long-winded viva may not score you the simple points on the OSCE. Still, many registrars are now familiar with what the new format is like (especially if you provide them a copy of the syllabus) and can still quiz you.
Tutorial by clinicians
These tutors can help build up your physical examination skills and viva skills. Renowned tutors like Alfred Kow and Kenneth Mak are perpetually booked for their Mock OSCES, viva sessions. I didnt go for any of the above. My tutors were excellent and even if the some parts of the tutorials did not help for the exam, I went away with a deeper understanding of surgery and principles which must surely help in daily work. Choon Seng and Adrian Chow really helped us quite a fair bit. These people take time off their precious evenings and weekends to help so do remember what kind favours you have received and pass it on forwards in future. Kudos to them!
Anatomy tutorial
Another key tutorial will be that by Prof Raj (antrajen@nus.edu.sg) from the NUS anatomy department. If he is not available, he may get Prof Voon to help instead. $200/person nominal fee paid to NUS. You have to arrange this by yourself - its 3 sessions lasting about 3 hours each. Lots of hands-on with cadavers and prosections just like in the real exam. Identify all the key structures during these sessions. Finish Harold Ellis before going into this to gain maximum benefit.
Prep courses
Prep courses are held by NUS DGMS every year (except my year). Costs about SGD$2000, full-time all day course for 1 to 2 weeks which you need to take leave for. People who have been to these say it is worth it. I did not as there was no such course in 2012 but I do not think it is absolutely essential.
Prep courses are also held by RCS (including mock exams, anatomy). Apparently quite good. But seriously, you want to fly all the way to UK just to do this? Nobody does this unless you are too rich, have too much leave and just do not trust any of the local tutors which in my opinion is plain stupid. Other private prep courses that are running in UK include the Dr Exam series.
Medical cases
Patients with pacemakers, prosthetic valves, heart murmurs and COPD come out EVERY year. Please go revise your steps and see a few patients in the wards with these. Or at least know the theory of it if you are still fresh from MBBS with all the steps well-drilled in your head
Time
If you only have 1 month to prepare for everything, I would say skip all these courses and tutorials and just mug to get the knowledge in, concentrating on the TYS. Perhaps an exception to this would be the anatomy tutorial. People have gotten away without a single tutorial as well! Though I believe clinical tutorials will get more relevant as RCS tries to shift the focus back to real patients with real signs rather than people who are faking RIF guarding/rebound tenderness.
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