So you have finally gotten through the written papers which tested knowledge you never knew you had. You are now facing the final part of the MRCPCH – the Clinical Exam.
We know that this is a daunting process and we hope that we can give you some tools to prepare yourself more fully for the examination.
The main thing to remember with the clinical exam is that it is there to check that you are ready to be a junior registrar not fully trained completely knowledgeable consultant who knows everything there is to know about their specialty.
The examiners in each station will be consultants but they will not be a specialist in the station they are examining! They will have been given the list of signs that each patient has and will have examined the patient beforehand with another examiner to agree which are ones that should not be missed!
During each station they want to know that you are competent at examining children, that you can pick up obvious signs and that you can put all the information together to come up with a logical presentation.
Sometimes it is not possible to put all the signs together and this is why the revision process is so important. It prepares you for that station where you are completely confused and gives you a framework to work from. We hope that this website will give you this and more!
There is a links tab which points you to other websites that previous trainees have used and within this a page regarding courses.
While MRCPCH clinical courses can be useful they are also costly – therefore think hard about them before applying. You can quite often access teaching at your local hospitals and teaching hospitals which will rival the courses in terms of variety of patients seen.
Our hints and tips page gives tips from previous candidates that they feel helped them to get through the exam.
And remember……. The best revision is done during you working day, if you treat every patient you see as a station then you will be the most prepared you can for the exam.