GP Specialist Training
May 11th 2012 02:32
I used to work in what I thought was quite a pressured situation, a public office where we handled inquiries about people's electricity accounts. Several phones might be ringing at once, and you'd have irritable people at the counter demanding to know why their account was so high...when they never turned the heater on...!
But all this pales into insignificance when I look at the written examination for GP speciality training at stage three. The GPST stage 3 requires you to imagine a situation where you have to be at a certain place by 3 pm - and you can't miss this appointment. It's now 1 pm and the following situations have to be prioritized, and your justifications for prioritizing them in this order needs to be stated, in a reasonable amount of detail.
A. One of your female patients has dementia and severe Parkinsons disease. Her son has travelled two hundred miles to meet with you. He is waiting to discuss his mothers future care.
B. You overhear a student nurse repeatedly shouting at a demented patient in the bed next to the nursing station where you are working.
C. The oncology nurse contacts you to inform you that one of the patients who is neutropenic has developed a temperature of 40.2 degree centigrade. {I'm not even going to try and explain what neutropenic is, because, as a GP doing this kind of training, you should know!]
D. The ward nurse-in-charge informs you that a patient who was diagnosed with multiple pulmonary emboli two days ago is refusing to take their Warfarin.
E. You receive a text message from a colleague, whom you are due to hand over to, informing you that they will be late for their shift again (this is the third time in three weeks), and asking if you will cover them.
As a layperson, I'd probably tackle the easiest first, like telling my colleague to pull his finger out, or giving the nurse in the next nursing station a boot up the backside. Neither of these is probably PC enough for the exam, I suspect, but at least they might relieve you quickly of two issues (and relieve your frustration). I'll leave you to decide how to deal with the other three, but the one that would most concern me (and this is just me) would be meeting up with the son who's travelled 200 miles.
But I'm not taking a GP exam and not likely to be, so I won't even be looking at the GP application which requires me to fit criteria that's way outside my experience.
GP recruitment is a huge undertaking in the UK, especially in the specialist area, so it's not surprising that an exam like the one I've detailed above is part of the application process. There's also an exam that comes before the one above, and that tests empathy and communication and other similar skills. It has two sections, one of which is related to an everyday practical matter - it's management, in fact - and the other more specifically to diagnosis.
This first test is interesting in that it could apply to any person who has to make decisions that affect a number of people. In fact it's a test that a few people who serve behind counters could well take to show whether they really have the skills to do the job they're doing. But that's another story!
But all this pales into insignificance when I look at the written examination for GP speciality training at stage three. The GPST stage 3 requires you to imagine a situation where you have to be at a certain place by 3 pm - and you can't miss this appointment. It's now 1 pm and the following situations have to be prioritized, and your justifications for prioritizing them in this order needs to be stated, in a reasonable amount of detail.
A. One of your female patients has dementia and severe Parkinsons disease. Her son has travelled two hundred miles to meet with you. He is waiting to discuss his mothers future care.
B. You overhear a student nurse repeatedly shouting at a demented patient in the bed next to the nursing station where you are working.
C. The oncology nurse contacts you to inform you that one of the patients who is neutropenic has developed a temperature of 40.2 degree centigrade. {I'm not even going to try and explain what neutropenic is, because, as a GP doing this kind of training, you should know!]
D. The ward nurse-in-charge informs you that a patient who was diagnosed with multiple pulmonary emboli two days ago is refusing to take their Warfarin.
E. You receive a text message from a colleague, whom you are due to hand over to, informing you that they will be late for their shift again (this is the third time in three weeks), and asking if you will cover them.
As a layperson, I'd probably tackle the easiest first, like telling my colleague to pull his finger out, or giving the nurse in the next nursing station a boot up the backside. Neither of these is probably PC enough for the exam, I suspect, but at least they might relieve you quickly of two issues (and relieve your frustration). I'll leave you to decide how to deal with the other three, but the one that would most concern me (and this is just me) would be meeting up with the son who's travelled 200 miles.
But I'm not taking a GP exam and not likely to be, so I won't even be looking at the GP application which requires me to fit criteria that's way outside my experience.
GP recruitment is a huge undertaking in the UK, especially in the specialist area, so it's not surprising that an exam like the one I've detailed above is part of the application process. There's also an exam that comes before the one above, and that tests empathy and communication and other similar skills. It has two sections, one of which is related to an everyday practical matter - it's management, in fact - and the other more specifically to diagnosis.
This first test is interesting in that it could apply to any person who has to make decisions that affect a number of people. In fact it's a test that a few people who serve behind counters could well take to show whether they really have the skills to do the job they're doing. But that's another story!
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