PACES course by Nyan May

Hi everyone!

How’s your PACES revision ?
I am planning to share some updates soon.
So, watch this space.

❤️

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A must-read for all physicians caring for patients with cancer who are admitted to acute care. The toolkit outlines:

- key questions to ask your patient who has a diagnosis of cancer
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- key practice points
- recommendations for services and QI initiatives.

Discover the updated toolkit: https://ow.ly/FFKA50Q2Y5a

I have reached 700 followers! Thank you for your continued support. I could not have done it without each of you. 🙏🤗🎉

Teaching Thursday

Managing patient concern is a combination of interpersonal, communication skills and clinical knowledge whether in exam or day to day clinical practice.

It is crucial to be honest and not to be afraid to say to the patient if you do not know/have any answers.

However, acknowledge their concerns by showing appropriate sympathy and empathy.

You can explain to patients and attendance you need more information/you would like to gather more details to get to the point of understanding and explanation.

My tip to you is listen carefully to their concerns.
Acknowledge.
Answer if you can and if not, explain that you will get back to that later.
Avoid jargons!!! If you accidentally use jargons, dun be scared - just reexplain in simple terms.

All the best!

Nyan May

Teaching Thursday is back!

Due to some issues on this page lately, I did not manage to post for several Thursdays.

Anyway, I am back.

I would like to share a tip which served me well during exam practice.

That is “perseverance” and “self-discipline”.

When I practised for PACES, I made a promise to myself, I would study 3 hours a day maximum and 15 mins minimum (at least) without any excuses.

That promise was a game changer - I never missed a day to study and it formed a habit.
It helped me to gain more confidence in myself.

My focus at that time was to keep my promise to myself and then I started enjoying the process without much worries about the outcome.

That habit was a game changer and I passed the exam with flying colors at that time.

I did not pass my exam in the first attempt.
However, with my knowledge and skills, I was able to help more than a hundred local and international candidates to pass this exam in their first attempt.

Here is my two cents to you - “You are only one discipline/habit away from your goal!”

All the best & Never give up!!!

Nyan May

Teaching Thursday again!

This week is about abdominal examination station.

Examination sequences will be the same. I start
with general examination followed by abdomen examination.

Potential cases you will get in the exam can be categorized into 3:
1) Liver abdomen (cirrhosis of liver, hepatitis/hepatomegaly, liver transplant)
2) Renal Abdomen (PCKDs, renal transplant)
3) Haematology abdomen (anaemia + tinge of jaundice + hepatosplenomegaly/varying degree of splenomegaly)

When I prepared for the exam, I took 15-20 mins each day to revise what sings to look for in systematic way in each case and recorded my presentation.

Hope this helps!

All the best for your exam and exam practice!

Teaching Thursday

When you prepare for history taking station, do you know that you will already be prepared for part of the station 5 (brief clinical consultation)?

It is because symptom analysis and structured history taking will be in both stations anyway.

The only difference is you can do focused history only in station 5 while examining the patient.

Work smart! 🤓

Teaching Thursday

Hope you all do homework from last week about PACES stations and 7 skills to be mastered!

History taking is one of the communication stations they assessed in PACES.

You can easily get full marks on this station 20/20 by structuring your history taking format and managing time. (Of course, you need to get to possible differential diagnosis towards the end) 🤓

You will get 5 mins outside to read the scenarios given - use it wisely as follows:

1. know your role
2. Patient’s name and age
3. Type of scenarios

- Scenario with one or two major symptoms nothing else provided (for example, 53 female presented with recurrent wheezing)

- Scenario with symptoms and background history ( for example, 23 female with chest pain and history of SLE)

- Scenario with the above + some investigations (bloods + ECG etc)

- Scenario with abnormal investigations (50 male, fit and well, found to have abnormal liver profile on medical check up)

Based on it, you need to list 3-5 sensible differential dx to structure your history taking.

That’s all for now.

DM if you have queries!
All the best!

Teaching Thursday

To begin PACES journey, you do not need to know everything.

Yes, I mean it.

And the exam itself is neither difficult nor easy.

Yes, I am serious.

The first step is to familiarize yourself with PACES stations(including time frame) and 7 skills they assess.

PS( I will not explain in details - this is your homework - if you further questions after your homework - comment below or DM to my page 🤓)

Overall, there will be communication stations, clinical stations and mixed.

The tip for today is you need to know 7 skills they assess because you must pass all those skills + total marks > 130 in order to pass!

All the best!
Stay tuned for weekly PACES tips!

Stay tuned for Teaching Thursday!
I will be sharing PACES tips every Thursday to help candidates near and far.