History & Examination
Here are some resources to help with learning Histories & Examinations during the first clinical year. The main websites to use are Geeky Medics and Oxford Medical Education. A good textbook for this is Macleod’s. Click on the links below to be directed to each resource.
The greatest of all time when it comes to preparing for the practical part of the exams aka the OSCEs (Objective Structured Clinical Exams). They have written guides on how to take a general history as well as more specific histories such as a cardiovascular, respiratory or depression focussed history. For learning clinical exams (cardio, resp, abdo, neuro, GALS and peripheral vascular), again they have it covered, with both written guides and clear videos. Personally, I recommend downloading the guides as a PDF and putting it onto OneNote, Notability or whatever note-taking app you use and annotating around them. Find images for the signs described and put them onto the PDF next to the word; i.e. if it says look for splinter haemorrhages, then Google images of this and copy and paste next to it. This means that you know what to look for and you also have a single place to refer back to when you go to revise later.
Oxford Medical Education (OME)
If you get bored of Geeky Medics or want a bit more detail, then I recommend checking out OME. Same gist as Geeky Medics, but not as nice to look at. However, they are more detailed and could be useful to look at closer to OSCEs to grab those extra marks.
Books: If you prefer a good old book, then the best I’ve used is Macleod's Clinical Examination.
