Simply Psychiatry

I am a Speciality Registrar in Leicester and passed the MRCPsych exam in 2006.

In the OSCE exam around 50-60% of the OSCEs are repeated from the Royal College’s pool and 5-6 OSCEs are new. With this in mind I prepared for all the possible real life clinical scenarios realizing that under stress my wits often abandon me and I end up saying daft things. To give you two examples, while examining the pulse of the patient in a physical examination OSCE, I did not look at my watch. After a few seconds I realized what I was doing. I sheepishly smiled at the examiner and then started counting the pulse rate. In the akathesia station under pressure from a demanding and very restless patient I ended up offering procyclidine to calm her down.

I have accumulated information about all the clinical situations I could think of from textbooks and other resources. You will find that the information given in the communication and history taking stations cannot be covered in seven minutes. The idea behind giving detailed explanations is that if the scenario is changed you should be armed with all the relevant questions and answers. I suggest that you down load the scenarios from the trickcyclists website http://www.trickcyclists.co.uk and get the information ready for them but also read up the rest so that you have the info at hand should you need it. I realize that my list is by no means exhaustive and other stations can come up. If you are struggling with any new OSCEs send an email to me and I will try to look them up. I will also attempt to regularly up date the website.

Ayesha Ahmed