It's that time of the year again when medical students are examined on their clinical skills. This exam is what's known as the OSCE (Objective structured clinical examination). This exam has the exact structure as MMI (multiple mini interviews). In fact I believe MMI was created based on the structure of OSCEs. Basically, there are 10 stations. Each station has a stem about a patient. Based on the information provided by the stem, you'd have to either take a history or perform physical exams, if not both. Although UofT curriculum includes a weekly clinical course (ASCM - Art and Sciences of Clinical Medicine), we really don't get much practice for many of the clinical exams. This makes preparing for OSCE that much more challenging.

Here is a list of what we are expected to know:

History:

-Abdominal
-Breast
-Cardiovascular
-ENT (Otolaryngology)
-Geriatric
-Head and Neck
-Musculoskeletal
-Neurological
-Ophthalmic
-Peripheral vascular disease
-Psychiatric
-Respiratory
-Urologic
-Palliative

Physical exams

-Vital signs
-Respiratory
-Jugular Venous Pressure
-Peripheral vascular
-Knee
-Hip
-Lymph nodes of head and neck
-Thyroid gland
-Precordial
-General abdominal
-Liver
-Spleen
-Ascites
-Appendicitis
-Breast
-Male genitourinary tract
-Prostate gland
-Ophthalmic
-ENT
-Back
-Shoulder
-Hand and wrist
-12 Cranial nerves
-Motor/sensory
-Coordination/gait

As you can see, it's a pretty extensive list and each physical exam has a extensive list of things to remember as well.  If I appear to be unresponsive on MedChatter for the next week, I'll probably studying for the OSCE, so I apologize. But I'll try to blog as much as I can.

Kevin