My first 12-week hospital placement and the OSCEs

This year, my summer was a bit shorter than usual as my third year of University started back in June already. After a few introductory lectures, we were sent off to our first proper hospital placement which lasted for 12 weeks. What I mean by “proper” is that this was the first time we were allowed to perform clinical skills (you can read more about these in my previous blogpost), see patients alone in clinics or to examine them. After this placement, we sat our first OSCE exam which I shall explain later. To summarise then, I am going to write about the last few months of my life in Sheffield.

Firstly, the hospital placement. I was allocated to Doncaster, which is a town about a 45min drive away from Sheffield. I was placed on a gastro-intestinal surgical ward and before I started there, I thought those 12 weeks would be very repetitive – morning ward rounds (that is when the team of doctors and nurses go around each bed and make plans for each patient) followed by observing a couple of surgeries. I could not have been more wrong. The consultant I was under was absolutely brilliant. She made personalised timetables for us, we were on different surgical wards every week and we could visit other hospital departments as well. The Doncaster teaching hospital also organised various lectures tailored just for us and we had group teachings lead by a general practitioner too. We spent most times helping the Foundation doctors (those are the most junior doctors in the hospital who just graduated from a medical school) by doing the practical jobs for them (taking bloods and cannulating), examining and taking histories from patients and reporting our findings back to them. “Taking a history” means asking a patient a few structured questions to find out why they have been admitted to the hospital, what symptoms they have and figuring out what the diagnosis might be.

One of the most memorable days on placement was when I got to translate for two different patients who spoke limited English. The first patient was a Vietnamese man who did not understand why he needs to undertake a surgery. I managed to utilise my imperfect Vietnamese to explain everything to him and put his mind at ease. The other patient was a Slovak Roma who was called into a clinic and when he found out I spoke Czech, he was over the moon and told me everything that was bothering him and after a discussion with the doctor, I clarified to the patient which investigations will now be taking place. Encounters like these truly put the duty of care and the sense of responsibility into real-life scenarios. I wish I could write more about the wonderful patients I met, however, I am running out of space and there are still so many things I would like to tell you about!

Moving on, the OSCEs is an exam comprised of 12 stations each with a different task. Each station had an examiner and a patient actor present. We had seven minutes to fulfil the task which were either examining the fake patient or taking a history from them. We needed to learn how to do 16 examinations in total, including the heart, lungs, tummy, cranial nerves or a foot exam of a diabetic patient. The diagnoses we had to knew were the conditions we were taught in second year. After the seven minutes, we had a minute to answer the examiner’s questions. While we were talking to or examining the patient actor, the examiners were marking us on a standardised tablet to ensure objectivity and uniformity. I really enjoyed this format of an exam as this was the first time I was being marked on both my knowledge and my communicational skills. Now, a week later, I know that I have passed my exam so I am currently enjoying my well-deserved holidays and looking forward to my new volunteering placement commencing next week.

And finally, I am attaching two photos to illustrate the last few months.

I am wearing “scrubs” – a uniform that is worn when you are going to operation theatres.

The second picture is a photo of me and my beautiful diagram of “differential diagnoses” of fall – basically a list of conditions that could potentially cause a fall.

Moje první 12týdenní stáž v nemocnici a „OSCE“
Moje první 12týdenní stáž v nemocnici a „OSCE“

More blog articles

All news