How to Prepare and

Attempt your Professional

Examinations
The Purpose of Examinations
• Exam tests the following:
 Your understanding of key concepts and theories
 Your ability to apply knowledge
 Your ability to criticize and analyze
 Whether you understand the exam question
 Whether you can cope with exam pressure
• Examinations provide lecturers with a guarantee that the work being
assessed is entirely the student’s own work
• Even when students have studied a course thoroughly they can fail
due to: -
 Inadequate/inefficient revision
 Poor Exam Technique (system)
Revision Techniques
• Be active
 Simply reading and re-reading is a passive approach and you will retain far
less than if you use active information technique.
• Diagrams and Tables
• Mind Mapping (‫) ذہنیخاکے کیمدد سے بیانیہ پیرا لکھ سکیں‬
• To bite off more than one can chew
• Flash Cards
• Practice Questions
• Take Short Breaks
• Reward yourself and Punish yourself
How to absorb a chapter like a sponge?
• Normal people usually start the chapter by reading 1st page of the
chapter till the end, and many won’t even finish the chapter.
• The first step is to flip through each page. It is going to give you a
sense of how long is the chapter, how many words are there to
pictures.
• Now go to the end of the chapter and see whether there is a quiz or
not, are there any case studies or not? Why do you think it is a good
idea to read the questions in the quiz at the end before you even read
the chapter?
• Now go to the beginning of the chapter and read the bold print,
titles, and subtitles. Write them down.
• 1st and last sentence of each paragraph. 1st sentence is introductory
and last sentence will sum it up.
• Listening to lecture matters the most.
• It is not a lot of work compared to cramming for the chapter at the
end of night.
• Repetition is the mother of learning
• Mark points in the book.
Distractions
• Find the best environment to study (library, park, or a group study)
• Make a study routine
• Silence all the alerts from your smartphone. Be away from your
smartphone
• Your studies, your examinations, your goals, your expectations must
be your priority
Get in the Mood to Study
• There are three types of motivation: -
• Pleasure/reward
• Pain/fear
• Internal Motivation
• Pleasure and pain type of motivation is just from external factors
• Cleared, written, and specific goals define internal motivation
• Your thoughts make you sick or well
• You can change your mood by just changing your posture (extension
posture). Changing posture changes attitude
• Warm-up by doing it little
• Exercise to flush the negativity
Vicious Cycle of Endless Revision
Attempting the examination
 Night before examination hall
• Stick to the routine you’ve already established
• You shouldn’t be tackling anything brand new the night before your
test.
• Review the study notes, important topics.
• Don’t fall for vicious cycle of endless revision
• Take breaks to prevent exhaustion
• This night will explain and sum up all your activities you have done in
the past year.
• Be relax with a positive mindset, Sleep is very important to retain
memory, do jogging.
• Last-minute preparation is a very important risk factor for going blank
Outside the examination hall
• A horrifying place to spend the final minutes before you sit for your
exam. Be on exact time.
• There will be people brimming with confidence who may throw you
off your stride by claiming to have revised everything possible and
thus begin to plant seeds of doubt in your mind. Ignore these people.
• Don’t re-read your notes
• This time is better spent focusing your mind and trying to remain
calm.
In the Examination Room
• Don’t Peek
• Focus on your mind
• Read the questions carefully for what is being asked
• Answer all the questions
• Write legibly
• Clinical scenarios (cases) are defined with prominent signs and
symptoms, and proper lab investigations. If you don’t get a proper
diagnosis, make a differential diagnosis.
Diagnosing a disease
• Look for age
• Look for gender
• Look for symptoms
• Look for time period whether its acute or chronic
After the Exam
• Its all over
• Don’t discuss it
• No two people will have answered questions in exactly the same way,
so the safest thing to do is to avoid talking about it.
I think I am going to FAIL
• Have faith in yourself.
• Once you have consciously made the decision to pass your exams and have begun
some serious revision, you will find that you are able to replace this thought with
‘I know I am going to pass.’ Doubt usually stems from a guilty conscience.
• Failure is not a big deal because not everything is 100% successful. This seems
like the worst possible thing on your heart right now and later it will be just a
fading memory with new surprising issues for you to deal with.
• Your hard work pays off. Not only yours even your parents hard work will pay off
too.
• No one will ever fail you until you fail yourself unless you speak out that,
“Please, fail me”.
MCQ Paper
Preparation of MCQs
• Rule out lines that could be asked as MCQs. Mark them. After reading
a chapter make 5-MCQs from the chapter
• Learn the strategy on how to make MCQs
While attempting the MCQ
• Read the MCQ carefully. Look for the question that is being asked.
• Answer it in your mind first
• Eliminate the wrong answers
• Read every distractor
Solving the MCQ in Exam
• MCQs allow us to think objectively
• Positive attitude, confidence, aptitude, and ability are the pre-
requisite for MCQs
• S- Screening, start reading, you know the answer click it, if not skip it.
• W- Winnowing, put the all questions aside that you don’t know
• E- Elimination, eliminate wrong answers
• A- Avert, avoid stresses
• R- Raid, make sure you check all the answers
Some Tricks
• Always pick the odd one out
• The answer most probably will be the lengthiest option in the MCQ
• When two choices have words that sound similar, pay close attention
to them.
• When two choices are complete opposites, one of them is probably
right. There will be two options that will almost be contraindicatory to
each other.
• ‘None’ and ‘All’ options are rarely ever the answers to a given
question. But sometimes all of the above could be am answer. Both a
and b type of option is mostly an answer if given.
• Avoid the extremes if the answer is number-based
• Don’t over-analyze
 Example
• A 32-year-old male patient, married, with no previous comorbidities
presented through the emergency room with complaints of fever for 8
days, bilateral subconjunctival hemorrhages, and swelling of hands
and lips for 3 days and 1 episode of nasal bleed one day back. What is
the diagnosis?

Endocarditis Dengue Fever

Acute Respiratory Distress

Syndrome Rheumatoid Arthritis
 In the end, examination just a
test of your feelings and how
well you control your emotions.