The future of the fellowship exam

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.

"I continue to be interested in new things that seem old, and old things that seem new". Jaquelin T Robertson

From looking through the exam and speaking to recent candidates we have a few key points to focus on for candidates sitting our next course:

1) Although the format has changed, the time pressure has not. Thirty SAQs is a lot of questions.
2) Because of this, candidates will need to be well drilled, particularly when it comes to the "prop" type questions - ECGs, XRAYs, ABGs etc.
3) Some of the questions might seem a bit ambiguous in terms of what they ask for. Having a strategy to ensure that despite any ambiguity candidates maximise their marks is paramount. 

These are three of the areas we'll be focussing on in the upcoming fellowship.com online prep course, with over 100 SAQs with answers and commentary, as well as a plethora of multi choice questions for candidates to practice on.

Check out our tour on fellowship exam.com. Over the coming months right here at the fellowship exam.com microblog we'll be dissecting out some of the important points from the previous exam, and posting pearls to help you get started with your preparation.

Coming up next in the blog we have a look at question 19 from the new exam, featuring that most dreaded of props: the Arterial Blood Gas...