Virtual revision for the FFICM

Abstract

We would like to report the successful use of a virtual revision group in preparation for the Structured Oral Examination (SOE)/Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) component of the Fellowship of the Faculty of Intensive Care Medicine (FFICM) Final. Although other reports of ''virtual study groups'' exist, 1,2 we believe this is the first report of their use in Intensive Care Medicine (ICM) revision and may be of interest to your readership. Since recognition by the General Medical Council in 2009 as a specialty in its own right, ICM has only recently developed a dedicated postgraduate exam: the FFICM. Experience in revising for the exam is therefore limited in comparison to other acute specialties such as Anaesthesia and Acute Medicine. To compound this, trainees are widely geographically distributed, limiting the opportunities to revise the interactive components face-to-face. To tackle this problem, the authors formed a ''virtual study group'' which met twice a week online, using preexisting computers and fibreoptic broadband connections (Virgin Wireless Superfast Broadband, 50 Mb), freely available proprietary software packages (Skype TM and FaceTime Õ) and online resources. Times and session durations were agreed in advance and pre-reading swapped. This method was particularly convenient given the large number of online resources relating to the interpretation of electrocardiograms and radiology both of which are expected to feature in future examinations. 3 Questions were pre-prepared by each party, and past papers, questions and hot topics were shared by freely available ''cloud'' resources (www.dropbox.com Õ). During viva sessions, transmission speeds allowed effective conditions to be reconstructed with rapid-fire questioning and discussion of poorly understood material in real-time. Virtual training groups have considerable benefits over conventional study groups in travel time, costs

Virtual study groups and online Observed Structured Clinical Examinations practices – enabling trainees to enable themselves

“…The questions were informed by relevant literature. 2–4 All questions had a free-text box for comments.…”

“…When first exploring this idea the authors searched Medline and Google for ‘virtual fellowship exam study group’. Only three papers, one each from Australia, 2 Canada 3 and the UK, 4 were directly relevant. As Kayne Chaplock points out there is a paucity of research published on virtual study groups.…”

“…The questions were informed by relevant literature. [2][3][4] All questions had a free-text box for comments. Thirty-six per cent agreed/strongly agreed with the statement 'My preparation for OSCE was/is adequate' and 23% disagreed/strongly disagreed; 41% were neutralpredominantly Stages 1 and 2 trainees, who were unlikely to have started preparation for the OSCE assessment.…”