OSCE Cases with Mark Schemes: A Revision Aid for Medical Finals

I used this book for my finals practice! Awesome scenarios that lend themselves easily for practice with friends that can simulate patient histories. Would strongly recommend!

The definitive book for practicing for your OSCEs. I made a previous false investment in another book (The Unofficial Guide to Passing OSCEs - Zeshan Qureshi) which was a waste of money: it had pretty pictures but was utterly substanceless for any medical students much beyond their Second Year. Don't waste your time and funds on the Qureshi et al rip off as I did. This book by Shelmerdine et al, on the other hand, is well worth the money. It comprehensively covers most if not all of the scenarios that are going to be thrown at you in the OSCEs throughout medical school - history-taking and physical examinations - with marking schemes included, allowing you to get into the mind of the examiner. If you know what the examiner is looking for, and put in the practice, you will get the marks you're looking for. With the OSCEs representing up to 50% of the marks in some 3rd year medical school exams this year, how could you not need this book?

This book contains a very wide range of OSCE scenarios with corresponding mark sheets.The scenarios are divided into communication and clinical skills, and further subdivided by system.The mark sheets themselves contain prompts and suggested questions to develop each OSCE further. There are score boxes for each of the elements assessed and further boxes at the foot of the page for a global rating. It should be noted that the global rating boxes are intended to be independent of the precise score attained, just as employed by some UK medical schools.The lack of guidance in each case for what might be expected to constitute a clear pass, as opposed to a borderline or outstanding result, is a glaring omission.The utility of the book is further limited by its large size (approximately A4 and almost 2cm thick) and weight.On balance, whilst this book describes itself as "A revision aid for medical finals", it is more likely to appeal to inexperienced medical students in their early clinical years.

Got this because of the patient scripts and clinical scenarios. I needed to practice for my OSCEs with a classmate and I was searching through all the books in Blackwells. Found this to be the best in terms of format. The Pastest OSCE books are organised by case. So they have many tasks for each condition that the patient presents with, while this book has examinations together, patient scenarios together etc so it allows you to practice a certain type of station like history taking as opposed to having to dig through the pastest book to get the stations you want. The patient scripts also have a list of differential diagnoses and investigations you would carry out which I found quite useful because the examiner sometimes asks you about what conditions you would rule out and what other tests you would perform.This is more for 3rd and 4th years who don't have a full OSCE or haven't covered all their rotations. It allows you to go by systems.Another good OSCE book is the Oxford Practical and professional clinical skills, which doesn't have scenarios but has useful tips for examinations and goes into a lot more detail. Probably more detail that what is needed at this stage but do check it out if your school library has it.

An excellent OSCE book for all medical and physician associate students. It contains all sorts of procedures with different cases and examples! It puts things into context so that you can practise and understand the case better. With each exam comes a mark scheme, even by just learning the mark scheme you would hit top marks as it is pretty much the same or similar to what examiners are marking against when you undergo OSCE exams. Very useful and also shows you how to take a detailed and accurate medical history. A great book to have, you will learn so much using this book alongside other books also. Very happy and satisfied with this.

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Useful for medical students

As a medical student I bought this as a aid to revise for medical finals and it was absolutely a great buy and must have for any medical student. It offers A LOT of scenarios for history taking as well as marking sheets to aid your revision. It also goes through more complex communication scenarios such as drug counselling and Downs syndrome explanation. Near the end there are also examination stations, however I felt for the level of final OSCEs it lacked a lot specialist signs. But if you add that in yourself this makes a great revision tool esp. for the communication sides of things which is key!