P4P: My favourite rotation

In the 1st semester of Year 5 and Year 6 of my MBBS course at NUMed, there are 5 rotations. One of the rotations is Preparation for Practice (P4P).

P4P is unique compared to the other rotations. Its sessions consist of presentations, advanced communications, prescribing exercises, debates, lectures and the bad day on call simulation. The emphasis is on various skills rather than clinical knowledge. It's also the only rotation where there's no in-course MOSLER assessment and all sessions are held at the NUMed campus.

I really enjoyed each and every session in P4P. What I particularly like about this rotation is the stress-free learning. The absence of in-course MOSLER meant that I could focus on getting the most out of every session without my MOSLER revision interfering with that. Since I didn't have to worry about the MOSLER, the learning process became even more interesting.

During the P4P rotation, students from three different groups were combined and we underwent the sessions together. Therefore, I had the opportunity to interact with everyone in the three groups, including those that I didn't know very well previously. I'm glad that many of my friends attended the P4P sessions despite the fact that attendance wasn't compulsory.

It may seem that P4P is less important than the other rotations, but this isn't true. In particular, this rotation provides the best opportunity to practise prescribing and advanced communication, which we don't get to do much in the other rotations. Most importantly, these will be assessed in the WriSkE and End of Stage MOSLER assessments.

While I failed the End of Stage MOSLER quite badly in Year 5, there was actually one station in it where I did exceptionally well, which was the non-physical advanced communication station. I scored 2/3 in one domain and 3/3 in the other four domains for that station. The skills I gained from P4P certainly played a big role in helping me achieve that.

In conclusion, my experience with the P4P rotation for both Year 5 and Year 6 had been really great. Both years, I attended every single session in this rotation without missing out even one, and I definitely don't regret that.