Tag Archive for 'finals'

How to handle exam stress

The pressures of everyday life can leave you feeling like you can’t cope. Revising for your medical exams is a particularly stressful time, says Charlotte Hudson. Here are some tips to manage stress. Photo by JixarThe symptoms of stress vary, from feelings of anxiousness to outbursts of temper, and during times of increasing pressure or [...]

Question of the day: OSCE revision on the wards- what should be done next?

A medical student is practising for her OSCE exams on the ward… She examines a 19 year old female patient admitted with asthma on the medical assessment ward for revision purposes. The patient has a past medical history she has the occasional migraine, and eczema. The observations are as follows. BP 128/70 Pulse  98 regular [...]

Answer to question of the day – atrial fibrillation

The answer is….. b. Warfarin Based on NICE Guidance 36 (AF) and the CHADS 2 scoring system. The CHADS2 score is an excellent aide memoir to anticoagulation in AF. It is based on: CHADS2 Stands for Score C Congestive heart failure 1point H hypertension 1point A Age>75 1point D Diabetes Mellitus 1point S2 Previous stroke/ [...]

What’s ‘UMAP’ anyway? A guide to UMAP from Medical Educator

UMAP is the Universities Medical Assessment Partnership and is relevant to many medical students from the UK. It’s essentially the organisation which is writing/ collecting a bank of medical student exam questions for use in ‘high stakes’ examinations, such as medical finals. UMAP’s description of their activities can be found on their website: On the [...]

The Rise of the EMQ (Extended Matching Question!)

EMQ’s EMQ’s are being increasingly used in research and papers have recently been published on their success in the USMLE. Its likely that many medical schools will adopt this N from many approach. An EMQ is simple: its a series of typically 6-10 answers, used a number of times with different question stems.They first cropped [...]