I set off early at 7:15am with Ethan for the 45 minute drive to the University to make sure that I arrived by 8am. Negotiating the university corridors with flights of stairs was a bit tricky with the buggy but I managed to enlist the help of students to carry the buggy up and down the steps. No-one was there when I arrived at the Clinical Skills laboratory where the practical exam would take place, although I had been assured by the nurse who is responsible for the lab that everything was ready for the exam.
Ethan in his buggy
A different definition of 'ready'
On entering I could see that everything was not quite ready! I spent a hurried half an hour sticking instructions to clinic room doors, sorting out boxes for students to put their written answers in and organising the manikins for the students to do CPR. Then the 6 doctors who were helping to examine the students arrived and I gave them their instructions and mark sheets. Eventually 9 students arrived who were going to be “simulated patients” but we needed 10. I explained the patient scenario and the student helping with the organisation quickly made some phone calls to try to recruit another student to help.
Students demonstrate their skills on manikins like this one
Multitasking
By now it was 9am and time to start the exam. We were on a tight schedule of examining 18 students every half an hour for 3 hours. There wasn't much room for contingency plans! When the nurse brought the first group of students, we were still missing one simulated patient so I ended up taking this role and being the “patient” to have my blood pressure measured. Thankfully a lab technician doing the exam timing helped to feed Ethan some mashed banana and look after him whilst I was busy!
Eventually another student volunteered to help and took my place so that I could breastfeed Ethan and keep instructing each new group of students every half an hour. It was frustrating telling the students a number of times to put their written answers in the boxes and they did not listen. Perhaps because Jordanians can find it difficult to remember more than one or two instructions at one time.
Putting answers in a box was a little too difficult to remember!
'Bend the rules' culture
Another problem that is rife in the university is cheating. The Clinical Skills laboratory has video cameras and microphones in each small clinic room and the lab technician called me to look at one room where it seemed that the student had talked on a mobile phone. I marched into his clinic room and demanded his phone which he sheepishly gave to me. When I turned the phone on to see if he had been making calls, I was amazed to see the screen saver was the table of blood groups that was the answer to one of the questions in the examination.
The answers on the student's mobile phone!
The doctors praised me for the organisation of the examination but it was a challenge to make it organised when the students and others involved were not so organised! Thankfully it all went fairly well and we managed to examine over 700 students in 4 days.
