This is my FSP experience in Düsseldorf. The examiners are experienced Physicians. The content of the FSP is a case study of a typical situation in a hospital.
Basically, the exam has three parts. Each part is 20 mins long.
Part 1 (Doctor-Patient conversation)
It’s basically history taking. I was lucky to have a patient who didn’t ask me anything while I asked him questions. Usually, that’s not the case. Sometimes, the patients tend to talk about irrelevant stuff and we would have to bring them back to to the important stuff. Thats a skill too. Very important part of this conversation is when you’re done asking all the relevant questions. One has to ask the patient if they have any questions for you. And one has to explain what you’ll be doing next. In some cases, the patient might ask you to explain about the imaging(CT, MRI etc)used for diagnosis. That concludes the first part.
Part 2 (Documentation)The writing part. One has to write down all the important information accordingly. There are boxes provided for presenting complaints, allergies, social history, family history, provisional diagnosis, differential diagnosis, investigations and treatment. Make sure you write everything as points as they don’t want to read novels.
Towards the end of this part, you receive a call from the lab regarding another patient and a critical value(Potassium, Sodium, Hb, Leucocyte, Blood glucose, Thrombocyte etc). One has to ask the person about the birth date and the station in which the patient is. Also ask the person to spell the name. That concludes this part.
Part 3 (Discussion with the doctors)
Well, this part was interesting. It mostly begins with small talk. They usually ask about where you’re from, when did you finish MBBS and what do you want do in Germany. Once you’re done with that, make sure to begin with the lab result, as it’s an emergency. One has to explain what the value means, the causes, symptoms and the treatment. On to the patient next. They barely let me finish. They asked me what’s my provisional diagnosis, the investigations I’ll order and the treatment. Also, there was a paper with lab values. Two values were deranged(in bold). You have to interpret them. At the end, I was asked some abbreviations and to explain a medical term to a patient in simple language.
That brings us to the end of my experience.
