FRCPath Part II (microbiology)

Format:

Paper 1: written exam: 3 hours

• Five complex clinical and laboratory scenarios in microbiology and infection prevention.
  • Each scenario requires assimilation of a clinical history or an infection prevention narrative, critical interpretation of laboratory results and will, typically, comprise 7-10 questions.
• Ten short-answer questions (SAQs).
  • Each SAQ will, typically, comprise 4-5 questions relating to a topic. SAQs will focus on a clinical scenario, infection prevention topic, laboratory practice point, and/or laboratory safety.

Paper 2: OSPE: 3 hours

• 15 stations of 9 minutes duration (plus rest stations)
• Including at least 2 face-to-face spoken format
• Topics will usually include laboratory practice, clinical infection scenarios, infection prevention, data interpretation and research methods

It is held twice per year (spring and autumn). Both papers usually on same day, but order may vary. Marks are combined across the 2 papers.

Specific skills:

The OSPE.

Face-to-face stations: this could be (e.g) discussion of clinical management of a case or role-playing conversations with other healthcare professionals. Consider your approach to difficult conversations e.g angry surgeons/site managers etc. Remember this is what you do every day anyway so try to imagine you are just at work! I found the examiners friendly and did try to guide you when you were flailing around a bit.

The other stations may test a similar range of knowledge to the SAQs but with a more practical focus. There may be some microscopy to do but there is no wet lab. This may sound simple but it is very much worth knowing what things look like – for example, you might know that a particular bug ferments lactose but do you actually know what colour change you would expect? On my paper there were still a lot of basic microbiology tests that we don’t really use in the lab I work in, so it is worth making sure you know about these (and what the positive and negative results look like). Expect things like gram stains, plates, PCR interpretation, antibiograms but also things on general lab safety etc.

 

Short answer questions

The sizes of the boxes should give you an idea of the length of answer required. You do not need to write loads. If you don’t know the answer, it isn’t negatively marked so it is definitely worth a guess.

Remember that when a question asks you to discuss management of a case this should include things you would do in the laboratory, treatment, infection control actions and public health actions if any.

 

Complex scenarios

These include a lot of information (around an A4 page of results and clinical scenario per question) You will spend a lot of time reading during this paper and it is tiring and can be difficult to concentrate. It is quite easy to make silly mistakes by forgetting pieces of information that are given early in the questions e.g penicillin allergies etc so highlight anything you think important. 

Again the length of answer expected is dictated roughly by the box size.

We hope this is of some use to you if you have this exam on the horizon.

Good luck!