Exams this week?.....

tallaght01

Hi guys.

Recently, there's been a few med students kicking about the forum, with really good input.

Just wondering if you guys are doing exams at this time of year.

If you are, let us know how they're going.

Same goes for the other students kicking about on here.

I always hated talking to my class mates about exams aftre they were done, so maybe here might be the place to vent.

Guaranteed a (semi) sensitive ear from those of us who've been there before

franklymydear

Hey,

4th med student here (Trinity). We had exams just before x-mas in Path, Micro and Pharm. They didn't go too badly but the college really made it difficult for us.

They 'restructured' our course format to allow more clinical experience, which is great, but that meant cramming a huge portion of 4th year lectures into the months before christmas. We had to negotiate with the department to have some lectures taken off the exam. People were sending e-mails to their tutor in expectation of failing.

Our pharm exam was MCQ +1/-1 but we were informed that "should more than half of the class get below 50% [the pass mark] we will change the marking scheme to +1/-0.5". They ended up having to change it and most of the class still failed. (Yes me too.. but just barely).

Anyway enough venting, as I said they weren't too bad in general but the med school really did us no favours.

2Scoops

franklymydear wrote: »

Anyway enough venting, as I said they weren't too bad in general but the med school really did us no favours.

Most people failed and they restructured the grading to be more lenient - sounds like a favour to me!

DrIndy

franklymydear wrote: »

Hey,

4th med student here (Trinity). We had exams just before x-mas in Path, Micro and Pharm. They didn't go too badly but the college really made it difficult for us.

They 'restructured' our course format to allow more clinical experience, which is great, but that meant cramming a huge portion of 4th year lectures into the months before christmas. We had to negotiate with the department to have some lectures taken off the exam. People were sending e-mails to their tutor in expectation of failing.

Our pharm exam was MCQ +1/-1 but we were informed that "should more than half of the class get below 50% [the pass mark] we will change the marking scheme to +1/-0.5". They ended up having to change it and most of the class still failed. (Yes me too.. but just barely).

Anyway enough venting, as I said they weren't too bad in general but the med school really did us no favours.

barely passed pharm in 3rd med, got a high 2nd honours in 4th med.

Now love pharmacology - but I am a medic - and it is an intricate part of my job to be as good as possible on it.

I have the clinical part of my memberships coming up in a couple weeks.........

Robbiethe3rd

Just finished neuroscience, evidence based health and clinical competencies for 2nd med. Could have gone better but not going to complain. That was out easy term and now we're onto pathology, micro etc. out in Beaumont when term starts again in a few weeks. Supposed to be tougher but it'll be great to start some brand new material though.

Actually really liked pharmacology but it was taught pretty well so that could be something to do with it!

angeldelight

Waiting on results of final year research project, pharmacy law & ethics, clinical pharmay, therapeutics... Final year pharmacy student as you may have guessed. Bit worried about the law, 60 MCQs in 90 mins open book but not enough time to look stuff up. Oh well

tallaght01

I remember those bastard exams well.

My weakness was metabolic stuff. Cycles coming out of my ears. It was horrific.

But most people come out the other end in one piece.

I was always surprised at how some really good people failed exams.

I remember being at uni with a girl who barely scraped through. She repeated 2 years i think. The med school even threw her out. But she appealed, scraped through, and ended up as a really really good doc.

Dr Galen

very true on that one alright. i saw a lot of good people not getting through, while some who wouldn't be as good did. Lot of book smart people who maybe wont be as good at the job others in an all round sort of way.

Personally I hated college and studying. Could never be arsed doin very much more than the minimum to get through. NOw though that I'm working in area that I like etc i find myself doing an awful lot more work, researching stuff, looking things up online, courses and stuff. I suppose once you get out of college and into the real world (again) your outlook changes!

Good luck to all those doing exams anyways, don't the them get ya down

Vorsprung

tallaght01 wrote: »

I remember being at uni with a girl who barely scraped through. She repeated 2 years i think. The med school even threw her out. But she appealed, scraped through, and ended up as a really really good doc.

Did a paeds stint up in Sligo before Christmas, was chatting to one of the SHOs (2nd year SHO) who was the sister of a good mate of mine. She goes "oh I heard XXXX" is in your year, I go yea, she goes "yea...he used to be in the year ahead of me :eek:". Turns out he's failed part of his final year something like 3 times, took a year out and is now on his last chance!

Echani

tallaght01 wrote: »

My weakness was metabolic stuff. Cycles coming out of my ears. It was horrific.

I obsessed about the metabolic stuff in our nutrition & energy course for these exams, and there was one question on ethanol metabolism which was a single slide at the end of a lecture; nothing on glycolysis, TCA, ETC, fat or protein metabolism ... Next time I'll focus a bit more on the stuff that's more clinically relevant, so that even if it doesn't come up I'll be happy to know it better.

Anyway, exams finished on friday with our first OSCEs, and I now see what people mean about some of the examiners doing everything in their power to knock a few marks off wherever they can. And there were some issues with one of the beds, involving it not being locked in place and starting to move when I was testing the patient's knee flexion ... and then suddenly collapsing down an inch or two when I did lock the wheels in place. I think that was an oversight on behalf of the examiner rather than an intentional pitfall, but it'll probably cost me. Other than that, my physical examinations were pretty good, the history taking wasn't too bad until I was asked to present and couldn't figure out the diagnosis (or remember the name of the abdominal region around the umbilicus without a couple of attempts) - the symptoms were vague, and this was in the last 30 seconds of my exam so I'm pretty sure I hadn't breathed in about 20 minutes.

The rest of the exams had their highs and lows; there's only one paper that I'm particularly worried about (the last one, which was completely neglected). It's been a different experience compared to the UCD exams; I think being a bit more consistent throughout the term might be a good idea; I also think I've said the same thing before on a number of occasions.

Results are supposedly out in a couple of days, more venting then

tallaght01

What exams did you do, Echani?

I had a woeful experience in my finals osce.

I had to put a urinary catheter into a bionic knob.

Anyway, it wasn't working so well (after 100 strudents had catheterised it, so fair enough) and the examiner told me to be careful with it.

So, I put the catheter in, and when I went to put the water in the balloon, the water sprayed all over my face. I said "F*CK" at the top of my voice.

There was a little old lady beside me, looking at me with horror (it was a 15minute station-examining this old lady's varicose veins, then putting the catheter in). The examiner looked horrified too. I apologised. Thought I was screwed, and vowed to get on top of my shockingly bad swearing problem. But he passed me.

They expect stuff to go wrong in OSCEs.

Echani

We had a bit of a mix; GI, genitourinary, upper and lower limbs - all modularised, so there's anatomy, physiology, biochem and pharmacology mixed into all of them along with some clinical cases. Also had immunology, a bit of haematology, genetics and cancer biology, a broad and vague look at psychology..

Everyone seems to have their own horror story about their OSCEs - one of our tutors was taking us for an upper limb neuro session, she mentioned that in her final OSCE when she went to do some reflex or another, the head of the reflex hammer they gave came off when she swung it, rolled under the curtain and down to the end of the ward. So it's worth checking the head's properly screwed in before you use it, apparently