This week called for celebration as after 6 years at Imperial we sat our last ever (hopefully) medical school exams!
Six years preparing for one exam?
Yep! Six years of preparation- no pressure!
It’s not that bad; every year has end-of-year exams which you need to pass before entering the next year. Thankfully therefore finals tests you on useful clinical knowledge that you will need to start work, not the details of the Kreb’s cycle or minor anatomical details.
How do they test you on everything?
Exams take a few formats which cover practical and clinical skills, as well as theory. For us this year this was a practical exam with clinical stations: in each you needed to examine/ talk to a patient, and then discuss the clinical findings and management with the examiner. We also sat two theory exams- for me this was in the same exam hall as my first exam at med school- very poetic! And finally we sat a national practical prescribing exam on the computer (no you can’t internet search the answers!)
So now you are done with exams forever?
Unfortunately not quite! We continue to sit exams through the rest of our working lives. Fortunately Imperial set up their finals to mirror our exams in the future, so I’m a little less apprehensive about them after all the practice we’ve had.
Celebration?
Yes! After the exam a huge cheer went up and many bottles of champagne were popped! Just waiting for the sun to come out now too…
Leave a Reply
This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.
