Last week, the MDCN spokesperson explained about how the pass rate for this year exam was below 50%.
Such a pass rate is no surprising considering that not all the candidates for the MDCN examination know what the exam fully entails before writing it.
In other words, out of the 100% candidates sitting for the examination, only about 30-50% of them know what to expect from the examination and know what is required of them by the examiner.
Below we will present to you the mistakes to avoid in your next MDCN examination if you didn’t pass the previous exam.
And if you are a candidate writing this examination for the first time, you should learn from this exposing piece to avoid making the same mistake in your exam.
Mistakes To Avoid In The MDCN Examination
The MDCN examination is divided into the Day 1 and Day 2 exam.
The Day 1 exam are for MCQs and Essays.
The MCQs include the best option choice. Take note that there are NO NEGATIVE MARKINGS for the MDCN MCQs examination. The MDCN has stopped negative marking way back since the beginning of November 2018 examination.
The MCQs have
- a regular text based mcqs
- a picture based mcqs
The total amount of time for the mcqs is 2 hours and there are 300 questions to answer. The regular text based mcqs are 250 questions, while the picture based mcqs are 50 questions.
The texts based mcqs and the picture based mcqs can either be long sentences structure or short sentences structure.
Mistakes to avoid include:
Spending much time on the questions with long sentences when you could have used the time to answer more questions with short sentences.
The day 2 of the examination includes the OSCE part. The OSCE part is the same thing as the oral examination in the sense that you will be required to use your oral/voice for the examination.
In other words, you will clerk patients, perform physical examination and converse with patients, counsel patients, answer questions directly to the examiners.
Some mistakes to avoid during the OSCE examination for the Physical Examination Station are:
- Not greeting the examiners and the patient.
- Not screening the patient station before the examination.
- Not stating the need for use of hand sanitizers or soap under running water.
- Not introducing yourself and asking for consent from the patient before proceeding with the examination.
- Not exposing the patient body if the patient hasn’t exposed their body by theirselves and the patient has given you consent beforehand. In other words, as long as the patient has given you consent to proceed for the examination, you don’t have to wait for the patient to expose the part of the body if they haven’t done so.
- Incorrect sequences of examination and missing a particular step. You should follow the sequence of IPPA (Inspection, Palpation, Percussion, and Auscutaion) for the physical examination requiring all these 4 steps.
- Forgetting to palpate for the kidneys, and spleen. In particular, the kidney as many candidates forget to palpate for it in the abdominal examination.
- Forgetting to ask about DRE (Digital Rectal Examination) at the end of the abdominal examination.
- Forgetting to cover the patients clothes back after the examination.
In all, always remember to sit at the right side of the patients when examining them.