So you have decided to take your MRCEM OSCE and are ready to achieve your first diploma in Emergency medicine in UK. Once you have gone ahead and applied for the exam and paid the fee you need to come up with a preparation plan ensuring your success. MRCEM OSCE has a fairly steep fee as an exam and ideally one would like to pass it in the first attempt to avoid a resit and extra expense. Unlike NMC OSCE a resit is not available for a lower cost by Royal College of Emergency Medicine.
Based on my experience as a candidate and later an instructor I shall share a few pointers here which I feel would be helpful to any candidate aspiring to be a member of Royal College of emergency Medicine.
- OSCE Technique
Though OSCE is supposed to be a reflection of everyday work in an emergency department but unfortunately the exam doesn’t work like that. There are certain techniques of OSCE one needs to master to perform better in the exam. For instance in a teaching station it is imperative to ask the student / patient / nurse etc
- Their rank and role
- How much they know about the subject in question
- What would they like to learn today
In my teaching station I was to teach a student nurse about ECG. In my desperate attempt to impart wisdom to a student nurse I raced from rate, rhythm to vector and how ECG depicts the electrical working of human heart. After a 6 minute long monologue the lady acting to be a student nurse smiled at me and said “I knew all that. I just didn’t know what ST elevation was all about ? “ leaving me with 30 seconds to save that station which I failed spectacularly. The point I am trying to make is that your knowledge base is not enough to sail through the OSCE if you haven’t practiced the simple techniques of passing an OSCE exam.
- RESOURCES
You need to choose and use the resources available wisely. There are a few published books for MRCEM OSCE and in all fairness all of them leave a lot to be desired. Your better options are to look for resources online. The first and best resource you have is the Royal College of emergency Medicine. www.rcem.ac.uk. On college website you can familiarise yourself with the SLO based stations. Information pack of OSCE and in particular this extremely useful video that explains and shows what you are facing on the day of exam. Other websites that can be useful are Life in the fast lane and St emlyn’s FRCEM OSCE. Don’t overly worry about the exam being FRCEM or MRCEM as the website has very useful pointers about how to deal with an OSCE station. I will enlist the books available for the exam at the end of this blog though I did not find them very useful
- PRACTICE
You want to pass an OSCE exam then you need to practice. As a trainee you will probably be offered some practice session at your place of work. As a non trainee life is a bit more difficult but you can use anything from a pillow to family member or may be a mirror but you need to practice your introductions and improve your communication skills in whatever way possible for you. The candidates for whom English is not the first language need to practice a lot more. It’s a nightmare to formulate a sentence in another language then translate it to English in your head and narrate it to the person in front of you. One method of ensuring decent practice and exam exposure is to book a prep course. There are multiple courses available and based on your location and budget you can book one of the courses. For residents near greater Manchester and greater London areas the course we are offering is probably the best when it comes to price, exam like scenarios, faculty and more importantly constant online practice sessions after the course with no extra cost to prepare you fully for the exam. For further details visit ukpassacademy.com.
- AVOID
There are certain things you need to avoid when it comes to the exam. First and foremost you can not pass or fail the exam based on one or two stations. As long as your total of all stations is good enough you shall be declared successful. In other words if you just fail 2 stations but score heavily in one then your good station can cover the two bad stations hence do not give up at any stage during your exam. Keep going, try and forget the bad station and do better in the next station to make up ground.
Exam takes place over a week or at times longer with some of your friends/ colleagues taking the exam a day or two before you. DO NOT go asking them about what stations were there as you don’t want to walk in with pre conceptions and already conceived ideas. That is a recipe for disaster and even if you are well prepared there is a good chance you will mess it all up.
LIST OF BOOKS
- MRCEM OSCE 125 STATIONS
- SELF ASSESMENT FOR MRCEM C
- BRAIN MAP FOR MRCEM OSCE