The second day was done. And it was a very fruitful one. I woke up rather late after waking up to catch the United match last night. Yes, we got beat. That dampened the enthusiasm a wee bit, but I guessed I must soldier on. I slept through the alarm and only headed for the shower at 7.15.
Managed to reach Hospital Sungai Buloh by 8. It was easy as there were hardly any traffic. It turned out that I did not have to be in until 8.30. Well, it was betters to be early than late. The briefing took us to just before 9, and we kicked things off with a teaching round practicing the new Station 5 format.
After a quick tea, we started our mock exam. For the day, I was given a station 5 stop. The case was Hereditary Haemorrhaic Telangiectasia. Not everybody's cup of tea I was sure. But most of the candidate spotted the diagnosis and on the whole, all did betters than expected. As the station was the most tricky of the lot in teens of mark distribution, experiencing the station for the participants were very important. As I has been organizing the MRCP at UMMC for the past 7 years, I hope the tips I gave were useful. not everyone realised that Station 5 carried almost a third of the total PACES mark. Definitely disproportionate, making it doubly important to ace the station.
After everything was done, it was just past 4. We gave a quick round-up of our general impression to the candidates right after and everybody, at least I hoped went home happy. For those PACES candidates, in Malaysia, there was still a death of courses such as this. The only alternative I could think locally was the one run by IMU. Since they would be hosting the next PACES diet, I don't think that they would be running a course anytime soon.
Many thanks to readers who took the trouble to read this entry. I am truly humbled. At the same time, I have recieved a few emails from the participants to put down in writing some of the tips I have given to the group who I had the pleasure to take in the last couple of days. As it was kind of late in the evening, I will do the entry on another day and hopefully you all would be kind enough to return and check. If you need to contact me further, please do so through personal email. My email is haris.rahman@gmail.com