Bedside Clinical Examination

Clinical Case Section: Candidates will be asked to examine 1-2 cases. These are typical issue cases with problems faced by intensive care team on regular basis. The candidate should listen carefully to the problem-introduction given by the examiners and direct their examination accordingly. The problem may be presented as a system to be examined or a problem that must be addressed. Example could be:

  • Mr Rajagopal is a 45 year male, hypertensive and diabetic patient for many years who was brought in this morning for acute breathlessness. Kindly examine him to determine possible reasons for his breathlessness.
  • Ajay is a 24 year worker who fell down the stairs and has subsequently been unable to move both his lower limbs. Kindly examine him to determine the level of spinal cord injury.

For maximal marks, candidates should demonstrate a systematic and logical approach to examination, clinical signs should be elicited and ‘seen to be elicited’. The environment of the patient in terms of infusions, ventilator and other devices etc must be noted and included in the synthesis of the answers. The examiners would proceed to discuss various diagnostic and management issues.

Primary Examination (Part 1): Clinical section consists of 1-2 ICU case per candidate (total 15 minutes: 7-8 min for examination and 7-8 min for discussion).

Fellowship Examination (Final, Part 2): Clinical section consisted of 1-2 ICU cases per candidate (total 25 min per case,10 min for examination and 15 min for discussion).

Total weightage to Clinical Cases is 30%, highest of all components. This reflects the Colleges view that its ultimately at the bedside that a true evaluation of the candidate can be done. A bad fail (< 9 out of 30) seals the fate of the candidate irrespective of his/ her performance in rest of the examination and such a candidate is declared FAILED/ UNSUCCESSFUL.