It's a big day on Thursday for everyone finishing up from the current fellowship course - the fellowship written! Preparing for the big day is exactly what the course is all about. It's natural to be a bit scared the day before the exam, but we want you to think about the exam in the context of the fellowship course. "Above all, we want you to remember the immortal words of Douglas Adams: Don't Panic!"
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In the fellowshipexam.com blog a few weeks ago we mentioned the importance of structure in your exam answers. Funnily enough, how you put down your answer is almost as important as what you write down. Part of preparing for the big day is thinking about how and more importantly *why* you write what you write. "The exam has rules and like any rules they should be used to maximal advantage..." One of the things candidates and their families often underestimate is the human aspect of the exam. Today's blog comes direct from resus.com.au (our parent site). Dr Peter Kas, the founder of the fellowshipexam.com course talks about what the fellowship exam meant to him and why we at fellowshipexam.com do what we do. Check it out below... "...that if you don’t get it [the exam], we’ve maxed out the credit card and will probably lose the house..." There is a real and appreciable difference between examination emergency medicine and “real life”. Often in the ED senior doctors are handed an ECG and asked to interpret it. This is analogous to the “old” VAQ exam and the “describe and interpret” type questions. The only way to approach the ECG was with a systematic drill, and work through it logically. But, the new exam is different. Take question 2 from the most recent paper.... To paraphrase Doctor Who, time in exams is less than linear and much more “wibbly-wobbly". You can’t pass the fellowship exam without practicing. It’s one of the major themes of the old fellowship examination has carried straight into the new exam, and it illustrates why candidates need to be practicing questions from the moment they begin their fellowship journey. "How you answer is almost as important as what you answer..." For the second fellowshipexam.com microblog we thought we’d have a look at a recent question published by the college from the first new exam paper. A 55 year old female patient is brought by ambulance to the emergency department after being involved in a high speed MVA. The pelvic x-ray from her trauma series is reproduced (in the previous question, showing an open pelvis). Massive transfusion has been administered while waiting for the retrieval team to provide transfer to the local level 1 trauma centre. An arterial blood gas has been performed. pH 7.20 pCO2 30 PO2 58 HCO3 14 Na+ 140 K+ 6.0 Cl- 100 In the context of the case we are asked two specific questions: "The most important thing is to have a consistent, well drilled approach to questions such as these, so that the number of marks garnered (and therefore the candidate’s chance of passing) is maximized." ACEM has now released a copy of the new written fellowship exam. It's available at:
https://www.acem.org.au/getmedia/0384ec35-94b5-4787-b71d-55de6c7b369c/Item-Writing-Handbookv2-compressed2.pdf.aspx (ACEM members will need to login). Looking through the paper, our first impressions are that it was what we were expecting. There are a lot of knowledge focussed questions, with a large number of "props" to support them. Gone are the old nebulous "describe and interpret" type pictures - now a specific number of findings are requested of each prop, and directed questions about the implications of these findings have replaced the interpretation phase. |
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The fellowship facultyWe work as emergency physicians, and teach, blog and write at resus.com.au Archives
July 2017
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