AbalaTips 101: Clerkship/PGIship to Revalida/Mockboards Preparation with Bonus: Comprehensive Exams

 Good day, welcome to AbalaTips: today we will discuss a topic which I hope could help the medical student currently in their hospital duties to pass the very long exams and in turn the end goal to pass their Physician Licensure Exam. Also which has almost same principle is to help students who are in 2nd yr in some of the medical schools who has comprehensive exam to pass

For the further understanding of the topics, I suggest you read the following blogs for you to understand further this blog. Some of the blogs here and picture is taken from blog with permission from my colleague PPCMD2.

By Me

1. Active Learning in Philippine Medical School

2. Visual Learning in Medical School

3. Test-taking strategies by Dok Juan Abalahin

4. Avoid Distractions in Philippine Medical Schools and PLE

By PPCMD2, my idol

1. Way of Studying to Medical School as an Average Medical Student

Assuming that you had read the blogs above, the clerkship or PGIship now falls into 75-90% of retention ideally since it is now an application of what you had learned in your first 3 yrs (or 4 yrs) of medical school.

In most medical schools, Revalida is done during the 4th yr of your medical school which is composed of two, written revalida is the typical long exam usually done in a multiple-choice exam type format consisting of subjects in your 3 yrs in medical school + what you can remember in your Clerkship, while in Oral Revalida, you will face a precept and you will pick up a case, you will be given a chance to review the case before you will face the jury or precept and defend your diagnosis

In the medical school where I came from, there is also this "Mockboards", which is usually done either after Internship or during Internship (especially in Midyears), which again composed of written revalida like exam which focuses on assesing the students preparedness for the Philippine Physician Licensure Exam which is necessary before the students are allowed to get their credentials or requirements from the school to pass it to PRC. 

Clerkship or Internship are both tiring given that you will facing a patient, interview, monitor, refer to resident on duty, listen to case presentations or censuses really there is a lot going on aside from doing medical skills which is needed also to be learned by medical student for practice purposes

But there is a break in between, what I did I will relax a bit, then aside from having minibooks like bluebook, intern app, platinum books, ob gold etc........ our cellphone can be a very powerful tool, in relation to military, just like their guns, in us, ballpen, medical kit, and cellphones are also guns, why cellphones, because cellphones can store from transes and even electronic versions of medical books aside from apps which could help us for our daily living. Going back to relax, once relax and really we do nothing we can use that part to review for this subjects, if you have a patient, you can also read their cases, remember ACTIVE LEARNING, is application of what you learned, you can read on the patient on everything that you can apply to the patient's case and apply Horizontal-Vertical Learning thus correlating it. Personal experience, it worked for me during Clerkship since reading and applying it enforces to longer memory retention of what I had learned. Also it can be applicable to oral revalida since if assuming you had picked a case that you had met in your clerkship era, you can apply it here and assuming you had read your case and read you patient that will be a best aresenal that you can have.

 Same goes for the Mockboards in Preparation for the PLE this is also application, ok take note in some PGIship if it is a 12hr duty, you will have an advantage to prepare further for the Mockboards since this is also the same time that you will prepare for the PLE, take note WHATEVER WILL BE YOUR SCORE IN MOCKBOARDS DOES NOT REFLECT THAT IT WILL BE THE SAME FOR PLE since you are using this as an opportunity to improve on what subjects are your weaknesses. I understand that there may be a rule that the school may "hold" your requirements if you did not make it to the cut off and you will advised to take the next boards, but try yourselves not to be defeated by pressure and keep calm, this is also an exam to check your testmanship skills. Use also your PGIship for active learning and read what is applicable on your patient as well, take note as per experience, this active learning can also supplement what is taught in your respective review centers for PLE.

Let me write also a Bonus which is Comprehensive exam, in one and some of the medical schools I know here in the Philippines, they have this comprehensive exam in per subject or in transition to 2nd yr and 3rd yr in medical school, ok the cue here is application of Active Learning in your first 2 yrs in medical school and correlate them, you can pass your subject in the medical school and proceed to 3rd yr, you can also use this to gauge how can you vertically apply your basic subjects to clinical subjects and beyond.