The MRCPI Part 2 OSCE exam evaluates your clinical skills. Furthermore, these may include your ability to take a history, perform clinical examinations and formulate investigation and management plans.
The clinical exams are currently conducted by RCPI in Ireland, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, UAE and Oman. The candidate will be asked to examine two 25-minute-long cases and five ten-minute short cases. One is communication and the other is ethics interaction with a role player.
Each long case station lasts 25 minutes. An instruction will be given to you verbally by the station examiner upon entry. You have 20 minutes in which to take a history from a patient while observed by the examiner.
You have to perform a focused and directed examination after that. A 10-minute notification will be given. Lastly, you will have five minutes to discuss investigations and management.
There are five short case stations. Four out of them will have a patient. In addition, the fifth station gives importance to communication and will have a role player instead of a patient.
In addition, the candidate will be asked to examine the patient and bring forth and interpret physical signs. The examiner will further ask questions relevant to the clinical examination that you have just carried out during the next four minutes. These may include signs present, differential diagnosis and management plan.
The candidate must have passed MRCPI Part 2 Written exam within the last three years. The candidate has to re-sit the Part 2 Written exam if this three-year period has expired.
It is important to prepare for MRCPI exams and not to underestimate the time required to get ready for the exam. Having an understanding of how each exam is formatted will help you further to prepare and develop good answering strategies.