Preparing for Part 2

It’s stressful to prepare for exams. Trust me, been there – done that!

But I’ll try my best to share with you the outcome of years of experience as an examiner, lecturer and student myself.

First step

Know your basics.

This is a dental exam, make sure you have up-to-date knowledge. Dentistry is dentistry everywhere. what you need to learn and make sure you understand and can apply is the guidelines!

Read all relevant updated guidelines to your practice. We aim to upload them on the website so keep your eyes on this space.

The next step is to understand the exam format. Make sure you are preparing for the right exam. Understand the marking criteria and what the examiners are looking out for.

You will not learn this from reading course materials. previous handouts are NEVER going to help you.

Knowledge must be sought from the right sources, and these are

1) Clinical problem-solving in dentistry By Odell

2) OSCEs by Kathleen Fan

Once you finish reading those, now it’s time to practice

- Practice out loud and record yourself- relisten to the recording and self-assess. You will be amazed by what you learn about yourself

- Structure and organisation – make sure you’re following a structure otherwise both the examiner and actor will get lost

- Focus on the task- no matter how much I say this, people tend to drift

- Be yourself- do not learn someone else’s way of saying something. You will be more believable

- Act but don’t Act up

- Be human – you will understand what this means when you attend practice sessions

Practice sessions are invaluable, choose a trusted person to listen to. Someone with examiner’s experience and academic background. You will learn from your peers; we all make mistakes and that’s the best way to learn. DO NOT BE SHY. have a go and listen to your feedback, this is how we all learnt.

Ask any questions you want; no question is silly. Analyse the answer. tutors are not GOD – they can make mistakes too. Make sure you trust the answer and that it logically makes sense, don’t accept it just because a tutor said it, especially with the quality of tutors running courses now.

If you get a chance to spend a day in a dental practice as an observer, pls do that. You will learn so much, you will see real patients, how they talk and how they express their concerns. That’s what the exam is looking for – real situations.