Simulation for the OSCE Exam Course

With the 2015.2 OSCE exam looming, we are busy preparing our Simulation for the OSCE Exam course which will launch on September 15th in Brisbane. This blog is your opportunity to post some of the tips you have for the next cohort of exam candidates to help them through their OSCE exam.

For those of you lucky enough to get a spot on the course, The Simulation for the OSCE course will give participants an opportunity to practice simulation based OSCEs with critical appraisal from FACEMs that have helped trainees through the 2015.1 exam.  We will also have a few very special faculty – newly passed FACEMs who have experienced the OSCE exam and can share their tips and tricks and insider information with the lucky participants.

For those of you who miss out we will post some tips here.  Feel free to contribute on this page any tips you have for the guys struggling to prepare for the next round.

To start you all off I will share a  few pearls and there will be more to come as we countdown to 2015.2 ACEM OSCE extravaganza.

eduAcute Simulation Pearls to start your journey………….

1. Suspend Disbelief. The mannequin IS your patient.  They may look like a fairly strange ken like doll but they are the elderly patient with MI you saw at 10pm last shift or the terrified child you cannulated yesterday.  You must treat them like you treat your patients – tell them if it’s going to hurt, look at them when you ask their history and explain to them their condition.
2. The examiner embedded in the scenario IS actually your resus registrar and the actor IS your resus nurse.  Even if you recognise them from the last APLS you instructed at, or worse they are the staff specialist you had a run in with last week, you must treat them in the role they are in for the scenario. They will play that role and so must you.
3. The examiner in the corner IS NOT THERE.  You should not direct questions to them unless they instruct you to do so.  You should expect them to make scratchy sounds and frown at their paper and you should completely ignore them  (treat them like a 2yo having a tantrum over a chuppa chup in the shopping centre….or something).
4. The equipment you are using IS your resus equipment.  Even if the monitor looks more like a laptop and the patient drug chart looks like a whiteboard and god forbid if your patient seems to have no arms and legs, YOU MUST ACT LIKE IT IS YOUR RESUS room. Don’t be thrown by it and channel the child inside and pretend everything is possible inside the OSCE exam room.
5. And finally YOU ARE the consultant.  You are not the registrar anymore. You introduce yourself as the senior doctor and you act like it (or like the better ones of us anyhow).  Anything less and when the results come out you will find you are still the registrar…

It’s a start…..Anyone else?