UTAS Medicine

Hey all.

So I had my last exam on Thursday. I’ll quickly go through what each exam was like.

Theme 2-4 was nicely straightforward. Two hours, about 5 questions sections with three or four short-answer questions in each. It was a good exam to show what we know. The questions were fairly broad, but you could work out which theme you were supposed to focus on and answer accordingly. They were all case-based, where a description of a patient, the context of their meeting to you, and problems encountered, were all given before the questions were asked, so you needed to get that information in you head, and give your answer in the context of the cases. There was really only one question where we needed to know specificinformation, and that was to list Australia’s public health priorities and explain which one was relevant to the previous case question. The rest were really more opportunities to demonstrate our proficiency, rather than the facts we know.

Because of this, it’s a bit hard to judge how you went, but I know that my answers weren’t bad, so it’s just a question of how nice the examiners want to be

The practical Theme 1 exam was a bit of a mixed bag. I came out of it feeling very good, but a lot of other people said they had no clue about at least half of it. We didn’t know, going in to it, what proportions of questions would be based on what subject, but it ended up being half histology, half pathology.

Because it was a spot exam, we had two minutes on each station, and when the alarm went, we changed stations. There were 24 stations with two questions on each, and I started on number 13, which was the beginning of the pathology ones, which happened to be more difficult than the histology. Most of the stations were microscopes with slides in them, and the question was usually “What pathological process does this tissue feature?” and “Name three cells that would be present in this process”. So the tissue might feature (chronic) granulomatous inflammation, and three of the cells would be epithelioid histiocytes, lymphocytes and plasma cells.

I know, thinking back to it, that there are a few questions I got wrong, but there were many that I was sure I got right, and I put down something pretty reasonable for everything. So I’m pretty sure I got through it okay.

The final exam, on Thursday, was the OSCE (Objective, Structured, Clinical Examination). This was supposed to be very straightforward. But oh dear, what a nightmare.

We were given our marking sheet in advance, a few weeks ago. We had to enter a room with a patient inside, introduce ourselves, explain our role, obtain consent, confirm their name, make them feel comfortable, let them explain their problem, close the interview, and leave. Pretty straightforward, right?

Well, mine was a nightmare. I went in the room, and went through my paces, said hello, obtained consent, did all that other stuff, pretty quickly but that’s okay, and closed by asking the patient if she had any questions for me, she said no, so I said okay we’ll stop there. The examiner then asked “Hayden are you sure you don’t want to ask anything else? Anything at all?” and I was thrown, I froze, I sat there for thirty seconds and said I’ve drawn a blank, so she said “How will you close this interview?” and I thought I had, so I just repeated myself again. And again. Oh dear. The poor patient must have thought I’d gone crazy.

Thankfully the examiner said “Okay Hayden, thank you” and I could leave, but I was devastated when I left, because I thought I was good at this communication stuff (Theme 2). Little did I know how much pressure could affect me! I’m definitely going to have to work on it more before the next OSCE. Thank GOODNESS, this exam didn’t need to be passed, so long as I did well enough on my other ones to make up for it.

To those just finishing exams, congratulations, and to those preparing for the UMAT, good luck, work hard, it will pay off. Leave a comment! Talk to you later