Finals

“Hello, my name is Dr PSD”

I can’t say that just yet, but I will be able to soon because I PASSED MY FINALS.

I’ve also had success in my UKFPO application so things are looking pretty rosy around here currently!

Including the SJT I’ve had 8 exams in total over the past few months.

My exam results:

Written exam - 72.8% (pass mark 62.2%)

MCQ exam - 75.3% (pass mark 60%)

OSCE exam - all 10 stations passed (pass mark 7/10 stations)

Long cases - minus 9 marks out of 6 cases (up to minus 32 points allowed)

Medical school prescribing exam - 8/8 questions passed with 100% (pass mark 6/8 questions)

National Safe Prescribing Exam - 82% (pass mark 65%)

When I came out of the exams I thought that I might have failed my MCQ exam and wasn’t sure about the rest, so I was very pleasantly surprised when I got my results. It feels good to have passed the exams with marks to spare, rather than just scraping through.

My UKFPO results:

My overall UKFPO score was 89.566 (43 points from educational achievements and 46.566 points from the SJT). The average SJT score for this year was 40.48, and my score of 46.566 put me in the top 10% of scores nationwide. My high SJT score meant that my overall score was very competitive. This meant that I was allocated to my first choice deanery (which is the area I’m currently living in) and I’ve just been allocated my first choice job. I’m pleased that I get to stay in the area that I’m already living in, especially as we own our house and my husband has a job he’s happy with here, so there won’t be any big disruptions before starting work in August. My rotations when I start work are: Endocrinology and Diabetes, Geriatrics, Upper GI surgery, Paediatrics, GP and Respiratory. I ranked this rotation first because I wanted to do GP and Paeds, and I wanted to have a good selection of medical jobs to gain as much experience as possible. I also strategically chose the rotation with GP over Christmas and Resp in the summer...

I remember before I started medical school my GP telling me that I must be “a sucker for punishment” on finding out that I was starting a graduate medicine course. At the time I was still very naive and thought that of course my love of medicine will get me through whatever difficulties medicine would throw at me. In retrospect though I can very much see where my GP was coming from! The past few years have been hard with never ending studying, assessments and exams. I feel good having nearly completed the course, and I’m glad I did it, but I definitely wouldn’t want to go through it again.

Right now I’m excited about starting working as a doctor. I know that at times it will probably be horrible, tiring and stressing, but I’m hoping that the good times will outweigh the bad.