RCPI Masterclasses!

From the official website of the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland:

The aim of the Masterclasses is to bring together experts in topics of established or emerging importance and to provide an opportunity for in-depth review.

2007 Series :
TREATING THE ACUTELY ILL PATIENT

Keeping up to date on evolving medical practice outside your own subspecialty area is challenging. To facilitate your continuing medical education needs the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland (RCPI) is introducing this new Master Class Series.
It will run in the RCPI over 7 sessions once a month (January to June and October/November). Each session would concentrate on a particular specialty, e.g.
Neurology, Cardiology, Respiratory, Infectious Diseases, Haematology, Geriatrics, Oncology, Endocrine, Rheumatology, Renal, Gastroenterology, Heaptology, Pharmacology and Therapeutics, Toxicology, Medicolegal, etc.
The Masterclass series will focus on optimum early management and what should be done in the crucial first 24 hours. Recent advances in management of common medical conditions that frequently require hospital admission will be highlighted. Early intervention that may prevent hospital admission or facilitate appropriate discharge early will be highlighted.

Previous Masterclasses:

Osteoporosis 2006: A short comprehensive review

Hearts & Minds: Exploring the cardiovascular risk burden in psychiatric disease

Note that the Masterclass series is approved for 21 CME/CPD credits in total (or 3 CME/CPD credits per meeting)

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Best Wishes

From BMC Medicine:
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Performance in the MRCP(UK) Examination 2003-4: Analysis of pass rates of UK graduates in relation to self-declared ethnicity and gender:

Abstract (provisional)

Background

Male students and students from ethnic minorities have been reported to underperform in undergraduate medical examinations. We examined the effects of ethnicity and gender on pass rates in UK medical graduates sitting the Membership of the Royal Colleges of Physicians in the United Kingdom [MRCP(UK)] examination in 2003-4.

Methods

Pass rates for each Part of the Examination were analysed for differences between graduate groupings based on self-declared ethnicity and gender.

Results

All candidates declared their gender, and 84-90% declared their ethnicity. In all three parts of the examination, white candidates performed better than other ethnic groups (P < p =" 0.011)," p =" 0.176)." p =" 0.151).">

Conclusions

The cause of these differences is most likely to be multifactorial, but cannot be readily explained in terms of previous educational experience or differential performance on particular parts of the examination. Potential examiner prejudice, significant only in the cases where there were two non-white examiners and the candidate was non-white, might indicate different cultural interpretations of the judgements being made.

The complete article is available as a provisional PDF. The fully formatted PDF and HTML versions are in production.

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Our MRCP UK and Ireland Part I Examinations Teaching BOF Book/ Free Download!!

Neurology4MRCP is the first website to offer a totally free MRCP teaching best of fives book, freely downloadable from the net as a high quality zipped PDF. The book is in 2 volumes, covering all major medical subspecialties, clues on repeatedly encountered MRCP questions, many past examination questions , a sample BOF answer sheet paper from the RCPI, and tips on how to solve difficult questions.

The author, Dr. Osama Amin MRCP(Ireland), insisted that the book is not to be copyrighted, so that everyone may download, browse, forward, and print the book, as away of helping the fresh and future MRCP candidates (but our website and author should be credited and mentioned).

Contents Volume I:

Chapter I: Cardiology.

Chapter II: Pulmonary Medicine.

Chapter III: Hematology.

Chapter IV: Gastro-Enterology and Hepatology.

Chapter V: Nephrology, Electrolytes, and Acid-Base Disturbance.

Contents Volume II:

Chapter I: Endocrinology and Diabetes Mellitus.

Chapter II: Rheumatology.

Chapter III: Infectious Diseases.

Chapter IV: Dermatology.

Chapter V: Psychiatry.

Chapter VI: Immunology and Genetics.

Chapter VII: Toxicology.

Addendum:

1- MCQs "answer sheet"; a sample paper.

2- BOFs "answer sheet"; a sample paper.

Note that the neurology chapter has been removed to join its counterparts in our official website (where more than 1000 neurology questions can be found for free, with no registration required).

The book will be available online as HTML web pages soon; this is specifically designed for those who have no Adobe Reader.

Please for any question, feedback, or suggestion, email Neurology4MRCP at Gmail.Com.

Thank you for visiting our websites. Many thanks go to our "solitary writer", Dr. Osama Amin; who, for more than 2 years, has been leading and directing us voluntarily. We would like to sincerely thank and acknowledge Free WebHostingArea.Com (Orgfree.Com and Ueuo.Com); without their excellent server and free services, this book and our free websites would not have been possible.

Team Neurology4MRCP
May 2007