The Chicago site was very easy to find…it's the Cumberland stop on the subway (very close to the O'Hare airport), and it's one stop off from the Airport stop. The site is located in the same building as a bank (Moreland bank?) on the 2nd or 3rd floor. They make you wait downstairs until the test time and then you wait in a small sitting room. They give you a piece of white tape to stick over the UB logo and then examine the stethoscope to make sure it's not electronic. At the risk of sounding a bit snobbish, I was a bit relieved instantly when I saw the other students in attendance — maybe 70% of them seemed to be foreign medical students. This calmed me down a lot (I saw a lot of students frantically skimming their study notes).
We were led into a room and given numbers 1-12. We had to sit at tables in our assigned number order. We watched an orientation video (the same one that you can also watch on their website. I had already watched this at home so it was more like a comforting measure for me. I recommend that you tell students to watch this ahead of time to get a better idea of how to prepare for CS.) After that we lined up again to enter the testing room site. The sessions were divided into three parts: 5 patients —> 30 minute break (with free provided lunch or dinner depending on if you were morning/afternoon session) —> 4 patients —> 15 minute break (with snack) —> 3 patients —> survey, go home! In total the exam was 7.5 hours and exhausting.
During the exam I felt very calm (with the exception of the first patient but I think that was me just getting used to the idea that I was actually in Chicago doing the CS!) because everything was so similar to the UB CCC exams. There were the announcing voices of "standardized patients prepare." and then "students may begin." Even the font of the door charts, the layout of the information was exactly the same. The rooms were pretty much the same with the exception of the two-way window but that was pretty easy for me to ignore. The SPs were very direct with their answers and I felt like I was taking a CPM exam.
I chose to type all of my notes (you could switch back and forth but I am pretty fast at typing so I stuck with that). I never ran out of room, and the format of the screen is similar enough to Dr. Gallagher's 3rd year clinical competency test. Dr. Gallagher is correct in that she makes her exams a lot trickier (and with higher standards to pass) but this pushes us to work harder at flushing out the d/dx and in the end it really does pay off.
I left that exam exhausted but pretty sure that I had done a pretty good job of organizing my differentials and tests. All of the SP chief complaints and problems seemed to be common issues and very reasonable. I felt well prepared by UB and I'm not just saying this because I passed!
Overall having the 3rd year clinical skills exam, the clerkship practicals (medicine, surgery, family med)with the opportunities to stop in to the CCC and review the checklists and the SP's critiques was very useful. I appreciated all of it (including the harsher critiques) even if I didn't agree with every comment.
