Sunday, 30 March 2008

Speed reading

With so many things to read I have been reviving my interest in speed reading. I'm not sure it's working though, although a computer based test tells me my reading speed has gone from 450 to 660 words a minute.
James Shorthouse has elaborated on my list of topics that might come up, with a few suggestions about what would lend itself to being a good SAQ question.

PS: For the princely sum of £7.86 you too can improve your speed reading by buying a program from here. I bought it for a bit of work distraction, but you can plug your own text into the program to read (so you can learn while you practice!) though you do have to tweak it sometimes in Notepad or Wordpad first if you copy and paste from PDF files. And, okay, it has a bit of a...ahem...naff title (Speed Your Read), but hey...

Friday, 28 March 2008

Other topics that might appear

Paediatric fluid resuscitation (Article in April
Anaesthesia and an NPSA guideline last year).

Epicardial Pacing (two review articles in March and April
Anaesthesia 2007).

Conscious sedation and dental type anaesthesia (Articles
in Anaesthesia last year).

Complications of head injury (Article in Anaesthesia in
May 2007. Head injuries are quite a common question).


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Sunday, 23 March 2008

So what's coming up?

Well, I think that anyone doing Final FRCA ought to be looking out for at least some of the following:

Questions on anaesthesia and obesity (New AAGBI guidelines)

Local Anaesthetic Toxicity (New AAGBI guideline incorporating Intralipid (Lipidrescue))

CEMACH (new report at the end of last year) - something always comes up the following exam

Intrapartum analgesia (NICE guideline in 2007 and two articles to do with epidurals in CEACCP in last 12 months)

Malignant Hyperthermia (revised AAGBI guideline and another perennial favourite)

Thyroid surgery (CEACCP article in April 2007, perennial favourite and something about it in every SAQ book I've got)

Coagulation questions (At least two articles in CEACCP over the last 12 months, it's another topic open for discussion, and there's the whole "cell-based model" to consider. Maybe something on Novo7, and also Fondaparinux/ways of preventing DVT/VTE)

So there's some things that I think MIGHT come up.