Once you’ve planned your revision, start working your way through the RCGP curriculum.
The clinical topic guides can be found here.
Today, we’re going to look at the Respiratory Health topic. Open it up as a separate tab on your browser.
For each condition within the topic, you need to be considering:
- Natural history of the condition,
- Incidence and prevalence,
- Presenting signs and symptoms,
- Risk factors for the condition,
- Relevant investigations,
- Management (acute and chronic),
- Prognosis.
There are 19 different conditions listed in this topic, but bear in mind that not each condition will require the same amount of time to learn. For example, asthma and COPD are very common and often managed in primary care. Pneumothorax is a relatively rare, acute emergency presentation, typically requiring hospital management. Of these examples, asthma and COPD will need significantly more time to study than a pneumothorax.
Also make sure to look at the ‘Examples of how this area of practice may be tested in the MRCGP’ tab – considering this is an RCGP exam, it’s important to take note of this. For respiratory health, this section lists:
- Interpretation of spirometry results,
- Symptoms of lung cancer,
- Aetiology of community-acquired pneumonia.
Now think about how you are going to approach the topic. Do you want to use a series of mind maps (or one as an overview)? What about making paper notes or a set of slides (you could copy and paste key information/flowcharts)? Do you prefer to read summaries/CKS/textbooks or watch lectures/webinars/podcasts and then make a few key notes (which could be audio recordings)?
Whatever you decide, go with what works for you. Some people choose to go back to whatever techniques they used to study at medical school, others want to try something different (often considering that time may be more pressured now than when at medical school). Just remember, having some form of revision notes can be useful for when you go back over topics to reinforce the learning – this way you can easily see the key points rather than needing to go back to reading/watching the original resource in full.