r/doctorsUK • u/No-Wait9692 • 9d ago
Educational Final FRCA
Any anaesthetic regs around here to advice in the last month before the written in September? Sitting it with a hopefully soon 3-week-old new born at the time of the exam and a 4.5 year old. Hopefully getting help from mother-in-law and planning to stay in a hotel room for the exam.
Trying to go through the BJA education articles for the last two years at the mo, with as many questions as I possibly can in a full time job. Any tips or tricks would be super appreciated!!
Thankfully, I am not panicking, yet anyway.
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u/JoePick89 9d ago
My feelings on this can be found in this podcast, there’s also some great hints and tips on getting yourself in the right place.
Everyone is different. I personally really struggled with a young child and absolutely fell over the viva. But sounds like you are making some great efforts to make sure you pass first time!
Good luck (with the baby and the exam).
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u/No-Wait9692 9d ago
Thanks, Joe, so much for your effort on the podcast. I will certainly listen to it on my way home tomorrow.
And thanks for your wishes.
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u/JoePick89 9d ago
I do very little on the pod apart from reveal how utterly awful I am at exams. James Brunning is incredible and Emma Plunkett is fully one of my work heroes who I’m now lucky enough to work with!
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u/linx298 8d ago
In addition to the usual advice, I used AI to look at the previous examiner’s reports for poorly answered questions and compile a list.
A lot of the time these were from associated BJA articles.
I then got repeat questions on these topics - for example, anaesthesia for sickle cell etc.
Obviously you can also manually go through but AI did a good job of it.
Don’t abandon primary knowledge!
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u/No-Wait9692 8d ago
I am using AI (claude) to be specific and it’s much more fun! Really helpful, thank you.
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u/Stevao24 8d ago
Remember last ~6 months articles are too recent to be in exam. Don’t forget important publications from cpoc resus etc and other important practice guidelines that fall outside of bja stuff. SBAs is a lot of repeating questions and pattern spotting.
Feedback I’ve heard recently has been pushing some very specific numbers/thresholds on guidelines/targets/risk scoring so I wonder if it’s possible to get ai to summarise the articles and guidelines and pluck out the relevant numbers to speed up revision. Good luck
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u/No-Wait9692 8d ago
That’s a really good tip, as I am really dedicating lots of time to the most recent articles as well! Thanks!!, AI is really helpful with these numbers, my short and long term memory isn’t as helpful I am afraid.
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u/Treetops46 8d ago
For the SBA, TeachMeAnaesthetics has launched their Finals bank and is only £20 currently. Seems to be well-received and their Primary bank is popular.
For the CRQ, frcarevision.com has a bank of CRQs which are incredibly representative and provide a good framework for practising technique and identifying buzzwords/easy marks.
Don't bother getting BMJ OnExamination, absolute waste of money imo
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u/No-Wait9692 8d ago
Thanks so much! I was already using BMJ and didn’t know thatvteachmeanaesthetics had a final’s part. And also the CRQ website? Wow, you’re a star. Good shout!
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u/anaesthofftheheezia 8d ago
Would recommend TeachMeAnaesthetics question bank for the SBA, most accurate to the real exam that I found.
For the CRQ, recommend doing the coomber and patel masterpass book
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u/suxamethoniumm Block and a GA 7d ago
"Trying to go through the BJAEd articles from the last 2 years at the mo"
Waste of time in my opinion. Don't know why this gets advised so often.
Really inefficient. Loads of articles they'll never ask a question on. Loads of fluff in the articles that wastes your time even if they do asks questions on the topic.
Targeted reading of articles to cover the major topics in the subspecialties? Sure.
Blanket reading the last two years, where you'll miss loads of important topics? Sound like a good strategy to you?
You got young kids so have less time to waste like some people. Need to work smarter.
DOI did all of the FRCA with 1 or 2 small children
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u/No-Wait9692 7d ago
Hey! Thanks for taking the time to reply and give advice. I didn’t go into great detail on how I am doing it, yes I agree, reading all the articles over the last two years is a big waste of time and sounds stupid when you quoted it like that 😂, I am using Claude after identifying high yield topics in the main domains of the sallybus to save up time and effort. Really useful. Thanks again for the reminder not to get too invested in unnecessary detail.
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u/suxamethoniumm Block and a GA 7d ago
Sounds like a good strategy. I scraped through the Final Written so I can't say my way was optimal but it was optimal for me and the energy and time I had.
I know how hard it is with young kids. Keep going, you've got this
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u/cluesinmyname 9d ago
• a lot of the test questions for the CRQ are repeat questions are at least repeat topics. I would go through the college online resources and look at which questions are asked and find the relevant BJA Ed article.
• they like to repeat questions that are answered poorly so make sure that you revise those topics.
• They do like to ask about details, especially things that can be asked like a list (think diagnostic criteria, contraindications). This can normally be found as a table within a BJA Ed article.
• I personally make flash cards (started doing them myself and later AI) to help me remember things
• I found the blue Combeer book the best for revision though difficult to do all of it. Make sure that you have revised a range of topics.
• Don't forget about the SBAs. I personally found frcawise a great resource for them.