How to prepare for the MRCOG part 2 examination. Anupama Singh.

Background.

Anupama Singh won the Vijaya Patil medal in the May 2013 part 2 examination.

This is the award given to the Indian candidate with the highest score - a great achievement to come first from the hundreds of bright Indian doctors who sit the exam.

She has written a summary of how she prepared and the difficulties she experienced.

I am grateful to her and am sure you will find it useful.

Tom McFarlane.

Advice from Anupama.

The MRCOG exam is the one of the toughest membership exams: it is indeed a fact.

When I first started thinking of giving this exam, many of my friends and family questioned my wisdom as it is not necessary to pass this exam to practise in India.

I got varied and confusing advice.  Still, with all this, somewhere I had developed a passion for MRCOG and I believe that did the trick. 

As enough has already been written about theory by Asma, Elaine and Lucy, I would like just to add a few points.   

Many MCQs come directly from the Green-top Guidelines (GTGs), including figures & percentages, so one has to be absolutely thorough with them.

I got all of them printed, back to back which makes it thinner.

I divided them into 4 sections and made an index.

At the end of each guideline I made a colour-coded summary on one A4 sheet of paper.

Needless to say, though this includes the most important points and diagrams, making them easier to memorise,  you still have to know the whole GTG.

For MCQs, I had thoroughly done past papers and from Dr Tom’s website.

For EMQs, pick up any 2-3 books and solve the questions, then only one gets to know how to go about it.

No amount of practising can make you prepare for the EMQ’s in the exam other than thorough knowledge of all the guidelines.

In EMQ’s it’s a good practice not to look at options first, but to read the question carefully and then form an answer in your mind.

It is advisable to go through all the options even though half way down from the never ending option list you get the correct answer because next option could even be the better one. 

For SAQ’s 2 months prior to exam I would daily write at least 3-4 SAQs in a dedicated notebook.

Any of the recent books of SAQ can serve as the reference.

I would later mark them with a red pen and then try to remember any corrections.

After about 10-15 SAQ’s the thought process become clearer along with appropriate time management.  I think practicing SAQ’s really helped me. 

OSCE. 

This one was the most scary and toughest part for me to begin with and I think the psychological fear of being an overseas candidate and of never having been to UK was playing a major role. 

Once the euphoria of passing theory settles down, within minutes comes the fear of the OSCE: booking courses, the fear of not getting a visa on time and the OSCE itself. 

As Dr. Tom has rightly said, don’t go for too many courses, because they all are basically similar.

Practice is what makes us confident.

I would be honest in telling everybody that the toughest part for me was introducing myself.

Once we practice that and do it in a confident manner, then rest of it we know.

Another point which I would like to emphasize is: do not rush in the station, read the question outside the station properly.

Though the question is duplicated on the table inside, if you have read or interpreted the question wrongly outside, then you tend to start on a wrong note, which is difficult to correct.

When you realise your mistake, then the shock of having mis-read the question  takes one or two stations to recover from.

I had done this in the RCOG revision course and then made up my mind not to do the same in the final. 

Dr Tom and Asma has rightly put it that let the role player lead you.

I had immensely benefitted from Dr Tom’s tutorials on Soundcloud. 

I appeared for OSCE in Abu Dhabi.

I would be happy to help any candidate who wants more detailed advice. They can mail to Dr Tom for the same.