I am writing to you guys this week in a fit of panic as us midwifery students are in the middle of exam period! Unlike many other undergraduate degrees, we don’t finish for the summer until August and this means we do our exams a little earlier than everyone else so that we can go back to placement for the summer. Because of this, for the last few weeks I have been revising like mad for the exams and essays I have coming up; drug calculation, 2^nd year biology and OSCE exams. So I thought for this week’s blog, I would kill two birds with one stone-tell you guys about the different exams you can expect as a student midwife whilst also going over my revision at the same time! So thank you all, by reading this you’re helping a poor student midwife get through her exams successfully, in one piece!

Drug calculation

With any midwifery exam you complete, as well as in placement, any perceived “unsafe practice” is an instant failure and the drug calculation exam is not different. However, being able to calculate the correct medicine is of upmost importance in midwifery as in all medical professions – in order to pass this exam every student must get 100%. The idea is that if you were to make that mistake in practice you would be in serious trouble, so getting any questions wrong in a theory exam is also unsafe practice. Sounds scary but luckily for us, working out prescription calculations is an everyday part of midwifery and so a second nature to us (I say this lightly- I wish I could be as confident in my abilities as I seem to be reporting to you all!). So an hour of metric conversions and calculating prescriptions with the key formula that medics live by (what you want divided by what you have and multiplied by what it is in), hopefully we will all be able to get 100% and pass!

2^nd year biology

Having not done a biology a level or equivalent at school, I have always struggled with the biological side of the degree, even from year one. Luckily for me, City is blessed with a select few biology lecturers who not only know their stuff but are able to articulate this in a way that even the most resistant of us are able to follow. Without a doubt I would not have got this far without their continued support and I am hopeful that the quality of teaching along with hours and hours of revision will be enough to get me through this exam. In 1^st year, the biology exam was based around a general overview of the human body and how the different systems work.  This year we have been studying the body more specifically in relation to midwifery with topics such as maternal adaptations (how the body adjusts in order to accommodate and maintain the pregnancy), the biology of fertilisation and implantation, pregnancy all the way to the biology of labour and the science behind breastfeeding and lactation. The biology this year has certainly peaked my interest, with a lot of the things I’ve observed on placement suddenly making sense (light bulb moment!). This year the exam is not multiple choice as we are expected to be able to interpret and explain the biology on a much more detailed scale and although I am certain this module will help me enormously as a midwife, I still find myself fighting a major battle trying to understand what on earth I’m talking about 90% of the time.

OSCE’s

As I have already talked to you guys in a previous blog post about these, so I won’t spend too much time here, but I wanted to touch on them again as they are advancing at lightening speed and stressing us all out! OSCE’s are practical exams that allow us to demonstrate the skills we’ve learnt in placement in a safe and secure setting. This year we have 6 stations that could come up and we will be asked to complete 2 stations from the following; abdominal palpation, vaginal examination, breast feeding support, recognition of the deteriorating woman and completing an observation chart, management of a seizure and resuscitation of a new-born baby. There are pros and cons of me getting any of these stations,  but I am just hoping I can hold my cool and not lose my head whilst re-enacting these very real situations in front of my lecturers.

This time on Friday I will be a free woman and I cannot wait, but I have a lot of work to do between now and then. Sometimes I have moments where I feel so overwhelmed it feels like I will never get through the next 5 days but as my mum reminds me on a nearly weekly basis at the moment, “of course I can do it, I’m a student midwife after all!”.