Friday 18 February 2011

Journal Club

We are starting a monthly online journal club to try and stimulate discussion about the latest research in surgery. We will pick one article per month and post it a few days before we post our appraisal of the paper. Then we hope this will stimulate debate amongst our readers. If there are any particular papers you wish to submit then email us and better still if you would like to contribute to journal club then we would also love to hear from you. The reason we are doing this is it is difficult to keep up with what's happening in research on top of all the clinical and extra-curricular activities. We hope this will help in some small way.

The article I have chosen for this month is:

Eur Arch Otorhinolaryngol. 2011 Mar;268(3):405-14. Epub 2010 Sep 15.
Laryngeal transplantation in minipigs: vascular, myologic and functional outcomes.
Birchall MA, Kingham PJ, Murison PJ, Ayling SM, Burt R, Mitchard L, Jones A, Lear P, Stokes CR, Terenghi G, Bailey M, Macchiarini P.

You can find it on pubmed and sign in via athens/institutional login to get the full text.

Amel

Sunday 13 February 2011

Website Renovation Part deux...

Hi all

So sorry but moving the website along has proven much more time consuming than I initially anticipated. I can however give you a sneak peak on www.iwanttobeasurgeon.com. There is still so much content to move over including anatomy and videos of clinical skills. However it will all be so much easier to access once its all up there :) You will note that we have added a new research skills section which will contain articles on how to conduct research, how to write up papers and how to get published. We will also be introducing a monthly journal club onto this blog and I hope you will be able to partcipate by adding your comments :)

Anyway, good luck everyone sitting exams and especially those who have been emailing questions to us. Please write back and let everyone know how you get on.

Amel

Tuesday 1 February 2011

Website and more

Thanks Amel for improving the website. More contents will be added in the next few weeks.

Good luck to those sitting the MRCS exams, it's a very passable exam.

Few tips to get through the exam:

1. If you don't know the answer to a question; ask the examiner to move on, and come back to that question depending on time. This is because, the marks are allocated per questions, and you do not need to get the questions correct in the order of being asked to progress through the station,

2. Some examiners take your first answer, where as others will permit a few attempts to allow you to get to the correct answer before moving on.

3. Basic finals standard examination, and history taking skills is enough to easily pass the exam.

4. Make sure you are familiar with dry skeletons, and all the points where any significant muscles or bone attaches.

5. Prepare from previous stations as they are likely to repeat stations. At least half of my stations were examined in the previous 2 years.

Good luck, hope you find this useful.

Keep tuned for more updates.

Romesh

Ps: click here for an interesting case report.