Therapeutics-Oral Exam

Four hours before my first oral therapeutics exam, I panicked! My heart was racing and my mind could not focus on the task at hand: reviewing the materials that I still need to memorize! After a good greasy meal at Panda Express and a few minutes of stress reduction breathing techniques, I was able to calm myself down.

Thirty minutes of preparation time went by extremely fast. I barely had enough time to scribble some information on each column of the SOAP sheet for the two major conditions before time was up. I thought I was pretty calm before the presentation, but I found myself stumbling over my words and losing my train of thoughts a few more times than I would have liked. Luckily, the examiner was nice enough to ask me questions to help me bring up some of the points that I had missed.

At the end, the examiner had two minutes to evaluate my performance and she was very kind to say only good things. I asked her whether I got an automatic fail (it happens when you pick a contraindicated treatment that can potentially kill the patient) and she said no. If I had to assess my performance, I would give myself a 7.5 or 8 out of 10, which I think is okay for the first time. I wish it was better, but I'll try not to be so critical of myself.