Another thing out of the way...

Evening!

Hope life is treating you all well? Curious as to which stage of applying for university you're at!

Well this past week has involved study leave and my OSCE practical exam. After swotting up on the in's and out's of possible conditions that could arise on the day, I arrived for my OSCE in my uniform and felt rather nervous waiting outside the room waiting to go in. I had received a little feedback from a few people who had already completed theirs and heard that basically the mistakes that were being made were due to forgetting the basic information due to nerves.

The same happened to me.

I went into the room, introduced myself and was handed a piece of paper with information on my patient and asked to make notes about them for five minutes and feedback. My mind went blank. I literally mean...blank. I quickly jotted as much information as I could before moving onto the next stage. After speaking to the assessor about what the information told me, I was introduced to my patient whose condition was deteriorating. After rehearsing at home and going through my assessment in a systematic way, the actual assessment was the complete opposite. The assessor prompted with 'is there anything else you'd do?' and that is the one sentence that sends panic through my head to try to find the answers!

After the assessment, I was to look at a drugs list and identify which of the drugs I would use with that patient and way, followed by a handover to another member of the team of my findings. Once leaving the room, I felt in all honesty a bit dumb. I knew my stuff! I had studied the causes of vasodilation yet not mentioned it once! The basics I knew like the back of my hand had been forgotten. Many others who left that room seem to have the same worry as me. What exactly are they marking us on and what would cause a fail? OSCE's are known to be tricky with nerves and other factors causing quite a number of people to fail, and I think this may be the first time it will happen to me. If I did fail, I accept it as I know my nerves got the better of me. So yes, feeling rather disappointed at the moment but all I can do is patiently await the result next week sometime and continue prepping for my project presentation that is happening next Thursday.


Many people do fail something during the three years. If you fail anything you are given the opportunity to retake at the end of the year usually but can only gain the lowest pass grade. For me it isn't so much the prospect of failing, but more the pressure of knowing if you fail a retake that's it. 3yrs of hard work down the drain.

But hey...spa day booked for tomorrow and worrying about results wont help anyone (or my focus on my next assessment!)

If anything I hope this gives you an insight of how nerve wracking things can get...especially so so close to the end! Would love to end this by saying I will write to you next week with good news, but please keep your fingers crossed for me!

Speak to you then!
Em x