 So I just finished my final fourth year oskies here in medical school And I am now officially a fifth year or final year medical student here in the United Kingdom I studied for the oskies quite a bit This is my studying timetable that I was adhering to for the last couple of weeks. It's pretty intense There's quite a lot on there and I feel like I learned a thing or two So I'm gonna talk to you about how it is that I prepare for my oskies the things that I do which I found most helpful That I hope will be valuable for you as well And then I'm going to show you my notion dashboard, which is how I keep track of all the different components of the oski And how I prepare and practice for each of those So one of the most important things that I needed to understand about an oski in order to perform well was to realize that this really is an Artificial situation at the end of the day what you are doing is putting on a show to your examiners and Demonstrating to your examiners that you have the skills and competencies that they want you to have and that you say that you do Yes, medical knowledge and theory is very important and in fact needed because you need to back up your logic and your reasoning and your treatment and Management with the actual theory But at the end of the day what you're doing is demonstrating practical skills And one of the things that I wish I could have just hammered into my brain early on when I was preparing for my oskies Is that the more confident you appear the more confident you are and then the better you're gonna perform in the exams Now first and foremost and everyone says this it's probably a thing that you want to hear the least But actually practicing in hospital on patients is by far the best way to practice any oski skill ever from personal experience Any sort of oski station that I can practice on a real patient in the hospital I will learn and remember so much better than if I was just practicing that by myself in my room Or practicing that with a friend over a zoom call or in person The reason for that is that when I'm in the hospital in the hospital environment a all of my cues are there focused for Learning and for performing the examination that I need to do but on top of that There's all kinds of additional sort of stress and anxiety that comes along with doing that that it gets better Entrenched and better etched into your muscle memory and into your learning how to perform those different exams or skills You know It's very different when I'm sitting here in my room reading a book and then trying to remember the different steps of urinary Catheterization as it is when I'm in the hospital with the patient in front of me and I have a nurse next to me or a Senior doctor overlooking and watching what I'm doing and then asking me about it later on or you know walking them through the steps as I do it Those are two completely different scenarios And this is why I find it very very helpful to have a good clinical partner with me on placement Someone who actually encourages me to take that extra step take one more history perform one more exam etc Because sometimes when you're by yourself It's kind of hard to find that energy and motivation to go and take a history or perform an exam on someone Who may not want to who's already asleep or something like that And so I find it very very helpful when there's a good clinical partner with me who can push me and I can push them We can motivate each other to do more and more practice in real life Another really important thing is that when it comes to preparing for oskies You absolutely have to have to have to have to this is like non-negotiable practice with other people sitting in your room And reviewing your favorite oski resource book or pdf or whatever it is that you have and saying things out loud to yourself Is just not the same at all as having a conversation with another person Or practicing the steps and skills on another person and since your exam is going to be on either a simulated patient Or a real patient It's really important to sort of get into the habit of having someone else there During your practice on top of that with a practical exam like the oski You can really only go so far by yourself And I know we have COVID now and it's become increasingly difficult to meet up with people and practice on them in person This is something that I was struggling with now when preparing for my most recent exams And what we ended up doing was setting up sort of a recurring zoom call each and every day So that we could practice history taking with each other and talk through Examinations and clinical skills and things like that But if you can practice with other people that is by far going to be the best thing hands down Something that I wish I could have done when preparing now for this exam If you really can't find anyone else to practice with or you're unable to meet with other people to practice your examinations And skills on I would highly highly recommend getting yourself a stuffed animal This might seem like a really silly or stupid idea But genuinely you know examining this fake hedgehog looking at their hands or listening to the different heart sounds and the chest Examining the abdomen blah blah blah It's infinitely more useful for me to do this on this stuffed animal than it is for me to just pretend to do it On the chair that's in front of me as I practice my exam You know, what am I doing looking at the hands over here? Am I listening to the heart sounds here and listening to the chest on the back? It's not going to be as good. So find yourself a stuffed animal Strange and silly as it is practice on that The next thing that I want to talk about is practicing each of the domains that might come up in your oski So what do I mean by this? So here in the united kingdom at my medical school king's college London We have sort of five main domains that come up in our oski exams We've got history taking stations communication stations prescribing practical skills and examinations So these five domains make up sort of all the different stations that could possibly come up And I'll go into this later on in my notion can board thing If you spend all of your time practicing different history scenarios Then you know, you might ace all the history stations and you'll probably be quite good at the communication stations as well But you know examinations and practical skills So forming a respiratory or cardio exam or doing an im or subcutaneous injection or urinary catheterization or an abg or whatever Those are like completely different obviously than taking histories and Communication stations So you kind of have to be really good at both or I guess all of them if you want to do as well as you possibly can Which brings me on to my next point which is to put yourself in uncomfortable situations And what I mean by this is that if you are a particularly good communicator If you are particularly good at taking histories and addressing patients complaints and ideas and eliciting all the information that you need Then that's absolutely fantastic But don't only practice those things because you're good at them and because it makes it for an easier studying session This is something that I know myself and other people we fall into this trap of just doing the thing that we feel comfortable in That we feel good at but as I mentioned before, you know, there's five different domains when it comes to the oski And you need to make sure that you're good in all of them So I challenge you to tell your friends to give you hard scenarios ones that you're unfamiliar with Maybe you haven't practiced as much because the more you practice them and the more you run through them The better that you're gonna do so personally for me now when I was preparing for these exams Which you can watch in one of my oski vlogs somewhere up over here I was starting to become quite comfortable with women's health histories So gynecology and obstetrics and then also with pediatric histories But I wasn't so comfortable with mental health histories. And so I asked my friends, you know Can you guys just ask me two or three mental health histories today? I want to I want to sort of get that practice and even though I don't feel comfortable with them Because obviously that's going to be the best way for me to get out there and learn it and become better at it Is to just do it So even though that took a lot more energy and effort from me My two friends happened to be really good at handling mental health stations And they taught me so much that I otherwise simply would not have known Had I not asked to be put in that uncomfortable position So yeah, genuinely that that's like a really good tip that I wish I would have used more in my practice for an oski Just ask to be tested on the things that you're least comfortable or least familiar with because if that comes up You want to make sure you're as prepared as possible The next thing is practicing under timed conditions So at my medical school for most stations what we had is a six minute station and then two minutes of questions Or if it was a communication station or prescribing station, it would be a full eight minutes So in all the practice that I ever did with my friends in all the zoom calls all the histories that we did We would set timers for each of the stations And this is obviously important because you start to build up sort of a subconscious Timer in your head knowing approximately when you're about to hit that six minute mark Now this is incredibly important because as you know for things like histories There are certain questions and topics that you absolutely need to ask about So for example screening for cancer with fevers weight loss and night sweats Or if you're asking about social history drugs and alcohol or in our medical school They really want us to focus on ideas concerns and expectations So icing the patient as they call it. These are things that we simply can't afford to miss You simply have to do them. And so if you're approaching that six minute mark and you know in your head Oh, shit. I'm coming close to the six minute mark. I have to remember to ask those things You know having sort of that subconscious timer in your head Alerting you hey, you're getting close to that six minute mark is very very useful So you can remember to ask those things that you absolutely cannot miss and obviously just generally speaking Practicing under conditions that are most similar to the real conditions of the exam Is going to help put you at ease and make you feel more comfortable and more prepared for what's to come Now let's talk about resources. So just like any other exam out there You're going to find a ton ton ton of resources for prepping for oskies for medical students Now although there's a bunch of different resources out there I'm sure there's a lot of different good ones My advice would be the following just choose one or maybe a couple of resources that you and your friends like Or maybe the students in the year above you have recommended and just stick to those resources Otherwise it becomes so overwhelming Personally what I did was I used this book sort of as like my guiding resource for most things that I needed to know for the oskies And like I used it quite a lot. I've annotated a lot of the pages Some of them are actually falling out I've read through this quite a bit and this was sort of my main guide And then we had other pdfs and bits and bobs here and there sent to me by other students Which were useful as well But generally speaking I kind of used this book as my syllabus and I could tick off things as I go along That way I know how much I've already done and how much is left to complete In order for me to feel prepared for the oski exam The difficulty with having too many resources is that resources are sometimes different Especially things for examinations One resource will tell you make sure you check the fingernails for lukinikia and callinikia And then the other resource will tell you nope only check them for lukinikia So, you know, they all differ a little bit The important thing is that you stick to what you know You build up your own framework your own set of rules and steps And you just stick to that thing So you don't get confused with all the information that's out there So speaking of resources, this is really important So I'm gonna zoom in for this one, all right Make sure you talk to the students in the year above you Now the reason that I say this is that obviously they've already been through the entire process once before And so any little tips tricks edges that they've learned they can pass on down to you And so for me personally I received a couple of pdf booklets that the older years had written out For pretty much every single oski station that could possibly come up Not only that, they went to my medical school so they know what stations came up previously And so chances are maybe one or two of the stations can be repeated again in the following year Which is great news for me because I've talked to the upper year medical students And they've sent me their resources down below So I really really really encourage you to talk to the upper year students at your medical school I'm sure you will find a bunch of them that are more than happy to share their resources and their work There's tons of really kind and selfless students out there So reach out to them send them a cold email or a cold DM on instagram If you aren't friends with them or anything like that, I'm sure they'll be willing to help And most importantly ask them what came up on their exams last year What came up on their exams the year before because most medical schools They don't have an infinite bank of stations to use or they don't come up with new stations every single year Chances are a couple of things are going to be repeated And so it's in your best interest to practice extra those things because they're more likely to come up And so you can be better prepared for them Something that I found very helpful in the days leading up to my exam Was going to our clinical skills room on campus. I'm not sure if every medical school has one of these I would assume that you do but basically it's a room where you go and you can practice using different pieces of equipment That are commonly found in the hospital. So for example, you can practice your flabotomy there You can practice urinary catheterization breast exams intimate per vaginal exams You can practice all kinds of things in there. There's tons of resources So make sure you take advantage of these things You know, most medical students are just going to be practicing from their home on zoom calls and things like that But if you actually make the time to go in and hold this equipment in your hand and use it and practice on other people You're going to feel infinitely more prepared when you walk into the exam on the day One of the worst things you can do to show that you have no idea what you're doing Is fumble around with equipment in the middle of an exam If someone passes you an otoscope or a laryngoscope or An ophthalmoscope and you sit there fiddling around with it trying to figure out how to turn it on It's probably not going to be a good look Whereas if you've handled that piece of equipment a couple of times and you've used it on other people Then you're going to look way more slick and the examiner is going to be like, oh, this person knows exactly what they're doing Let me mark them a little bit higher So that's something that I wish I had done more of and something that I definitely found quite useful So would highly recommend for you guys as well So oskies obviously are pretty artificial situations and scenarios, you know When you talk to a simulated patient in an oski, they don't really respond and talk to you How a normal patient would in the hospital and when you're walking your examiner through an examination or practical skill That you're doing you would never be doing that in the hospital anyway, you know So it definitely is artificial definitely is weird and you just sort of have to try and forget about that and think about You know, I'm just here to demonstrate my skills and show that I know what I know My honest advice would be to just try and forget that this is a fake or artificial scenario You know when I was doing my practice sessions with my friends on zoom If we were doing a mental health station and the my friend was talking about having cut themselves or having had a suicide attempt Or something like that, you know, I would genuinely try and think or believe that this was a real patient This was a real scenario So I could try to you know Actually empathize and show that I'm empathizing and think about the the sort of things that I'd make sure I want to ask You know risk what were the events before during and after things like that And the more that I believe that this was a real scenario and the more I put myself in the shoes of a doctor Talking to a patient who's coming in with x and y presentation the better I felt that I was able to you know Actually elicit all of the history or do all the pertinent parts of an exam and things like that And you know the reason for that is if you feel like this is fake and everyone's fake and their acting is fake and whatever And you're obviously not going to throw yourself into it as if this was a real patient And you're not going to be able to get as much out of it as you possibly could I think Now with oskies one of the main pain points for me and for a lot of other students Is trying to figure out do you talk to the examiner? Do you talk to the patient or do you just stay silent when you're doing something like a practical skill or a procedure Or an examination station? Now the difficulty with this is is that different people will tell you to do different things different medical students Will have their different styles and you know probably all of them are okay Personally what I've found and what I've learned is that if you just do everything silently And you perform an examination without saying anything without talking to the patient or the examiner The examiner doesn't really know what you're doing. You know, he knows that you're looking at the hands He knows that you're feeling for a pulse He knows that you're doing a blood pressure measurement here But he or she doesn't actually know what you're doing or what you're looking for And so the conclusion that I've come to is that I err on the side of explaining things out loud as I go along And depending on the station depending on the examination I either talk through what I'm doing to the patient or I talk through what I'm doing to the examiner Now obviously when you're explaining a station to an examiner versus a patient You're going to be talking in vastly different vocabulary and different levels of detail But I just sort of try and figure out what I'm comfortable with and what I'm confident with For different stations and generally the advice that I've gotten from upper years and from examiners is try and say What you're doing out loud because then they know for sure that you're actually checking for the things that they Think you're checking for whereas if you're silent or you don't say it then they never really know Don't forget to practice your case presentation at the end of the station So most of the stations that you do for histories and for exams at the end of those stations You're going to have questions from the examiner and you're probably going to need to report back the case Now this was something that I highly neglected in my earlier years preparing for oskies And so when it came to preparing for those now I really tried to do extra extra practice on it to make sure that I could nail it It's actually a really challenging task to take six to eight minutes worth of information that somebody just gave you And then present it back succinctly with only the most important and positive findings to the examiner And so this is something that I personally needed a ton of practice on and I still need a ton of practice on And something that I made sure to actually do over and over and over again on a daily basis to be as comfortable as possible With it and I mentioned this because sometimes with an oski We're just so focused on doing the actual station doing the examination doing the procedure that we forget that there are questions And a reporting back or summary coming after that that we also need to prepare for and do All right So now that I've told you everything that I possibly know that I've personally found very helpful in preparing for my oski exams And that I hope will help you as well What I'd like to do is show you my notion kanban board of how I visually represent everything that I need to do for my Oskies and how it keeps me on top of my studying and helps me visualize sort of what work I've already done And what work still needs to be done for me to prepare So let's jump over into the computer and I will see you there All right So this here is my kanban board for pretty much everything that I needed to do or know for my upcoming oski examination now what this is is a series of columns that you can see so here I've got comms for communication exams procedures histories prescribing Done once and almost definitely coming up if you're interested in notion and how you can build a board just like this for yourself I've got an entire video on how I use notion in my life I'll leave it linked somewhere up here so you can check it out This took me about 10 minutes to set up right at the beginning of my oski practice And I just wrote down everything that I would possibly need to know so for the examinations column I went to the examination section of this book I looked at the contents page and I literally wrote down pretty much everything that was there And then as I practiced exams and as I felt more and more confident with them I could remove them from this list and I can move them over to the done once column under exams And that way over time I would move over more and more and more of these things Until eventually the columns on the left were pretty much empty And everything was in the done once column over here on the right And of course you can do the same thing for procedures over here You can do the same thing for histories etc etc Every time I would finish something that I felt confident in I would take it away from the left and move it into the done once column And of course each one of these pages if you click on them, you can write inside of them You can add all kinds of pictures and details and information that you want This becomes a really powerful sort of visual representation and one-stop shop For information that you need to know about every aspect of your oski exam So I personally found this extremely helpful I would highly recommend you do something different even if it's just a list using a pen and paper It doesn't have to be on your computer or whatever But having this sort of layout and representation of everything that you need to do Is incredibly helpful for keeping track of your progress over time And then honestly the last thing that I want to mention is just the importance of a timetable like this one You know when you set out a timetable like this and you wake up in the morning You don't have to decide what should I study today because you've already written it on this piece of paper You've already told yourself. Hey today. I'm going to study exams and specifically I'm going to look at the neuro abdo and I don't know breast exam It takes out so much of the faff and the decision-making process around studying and it makes studying and preparing for exam So much easier. So if you guys don't already use study timetables I would highly recommend that you do and if you're interested in how I make my own I'll leave a link to the video somewhere up over here. All right, and that is it for me I hope that you found this video helpful and that it helps you prepare for your upcoming oskies in some way shape or form If you did enjoy this video, don't forget to leave a like on it and I'll subscribe to my channel to see more content from me in the future And I'll catch you in the next one face We've got history taking skit. We've got history taking skit. We've got we've got history taking skit We've got history. We've got history taking we've got history taking All right, now let's talk about resources. Now just get a hair in my mouth Ew. All right