Virtual revision for the FFICM

We would like to report the successful use of a virtual revision group in preparation for the Structured Oral Examination (SOE)/Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) component of the Fellowship of the Faculty of Intensive Care Medicine (FFICM) Final. Although other reports of “virtual study groups” exist,^1,2 we believe this is the first report of their use in Intensive Care Medicine (ICM) revision and may be of interest to your readership.

Since recognition by the General Medical Council in 2009 as a specialty in its own right, ICM has only recently developed a dedicated postgraduate exam: the FFICM. Experience in revising for the exam is therefore limited in comparison to other acute specialties such as Anaesthesia and Acute Medicine. To compound this, trainees are widely geographically distributed, limiting the opportunities to revise the interactive components face-to-face.

To tackle this problem, the authors formed a “virtual study group” which met twice a week online, using pre-existing computers and fibreoptic broadband connections (Virgin Wireless Superfast Broadband, 50 Mb), freely available proprietary software packages (Skype^TM and FaceTime®) and online resources. Times and session durations were agreed in advance and pre-reading swapped. This method was particularly convenient given the large number of online resources relating to the interpretation of electrocardiograms and radiology both of which are expected to feature in future examinations. ³ Questions were pre-prepared by each party, and past papers, questions and hot topics were shared by freely available “cloud” resources (www.dropbox.com®). During viva sessions, transmission speeds allowed effective conditions to be reconstructed with rapid-fire questioning and discussion of poorly understood material in real-time.

Virtual training groups have considerable benefits over conventional study groups in travel time, costs and convenience—benefits noted by other widely spread learning groups.^1,2 Our experience supports previous suggestions that this is an effective, enjoyable educational method. ² Advocates of videoconferencing suggest that it promotes more realistic conversational flow by “turn-taking” ⁴ , and our experience supports the idea that taxing viva situations can be re-enacted. Although the authors were fortunate to have revised together for previous exams, revision partners could be found via deanery training links or through the Intensive Care Society Trainee Linkman scheme, and we suggest that this method may allow trainees who are isolated to identify, and revise with, colleagues across the UK.

We are also pleased to report that the described revision technique resulted in a 100% success rate, although we concede that the sample size was small (n = 2!).